This Class Of Rattlesnake - A TWFAF Story
by Bigmac1989
Summary: Preparing for her new life in New York after her traumatic upbringing, Carrie is forced to confront a disturbing truth about her faith. Elsewhere, a senior church figure struggles to make right his own mistakes, as well as dealing with his own troubled past. Can these two similarly burdened souls help each other? Prequel to "That's What Friends Are For". TW: Catholic abuse scandal.


**Okay, so I've decided to do this out-take from my main fic "That's What Friends Are For", and acts as a prequel. The purpose behind this is to flesh out an event described in chapter 3 wherein Carrie discovers and grapples with the Catholic Church abuse scandal. As someone who holds a great deal of personal faith but who considers themselves somewhat of a lapsed Catholic, this whole travesty is a source of great shame and pain to me, and I felt Carrie, as a person of faith, had to confront it head on. Also, this story features a character making an insensitive remark about the scandal. This is NOT intended to be a mockery of those brave survivors who have my full support – it is intended to be a starting point for her discovery of the whole affair. So, consider this your TRIGGER WARNING for discussion of abuse throughout, both physical and sexual.**

**This story is dedicated to dragonslayerajahn, the latest person to take an interest in my work.**

"**May I beg Your Excellency to concur and approve of what I consider a most vital decision on our part – that we will not offer hospitality to men who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls. These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them. And if I were a bishop, I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization. It is for this class of rattlesnake that I have always wished the island retreat – but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born. This is an indirect way of saying "damned", is it not? When I see the Holy Father, I am going to speak of this class to His Holiness." **

**The above quote was written by Father Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants Of The Paraclete, a religious order that treats priests suffering from substance abuse issues. The quote is an excerpt taken from a letter Father Fitzgerald wrote in 1957 to Edwin Byrne, then Archbishop of Santa Fe, that announced Fitzgerald's decision that the order would no longer provide psychological counselling to sexually abusive priests.**

This Class Of Rattlesnake – A TWFAF Story

Carrie had packed her bags, already to go. Today would be the last day of a wonderful six months she would never forget – and the start of her new life to come. For the past six months, ever since her graduation from Ewen High School in Chamberlain, Maine, she had lived with Sue Snell and Tommy Ross in their flat in Providence, Rhode Island. It had been part of Carrie's request to Tony – that she have six months of freedom to experience the world before she committed herself to her new life and superhero training in the New Year. Tony had graciously agreed, and Sue and Tommy were more than happy to accept Carrie into their lives. Tony had actually paid a percentage of Sue and Tommy's bills for the period, as a token of his gratitude to them for unmasking Chris Hargensen's nefarious scheme. She had gotten to know both Sue and Tommy extremely well during this period, and now considered them true friends.

When she heard the blast of the horn that signified Happy's arrival, Carrie turned to face Sue and Tommy.

"Goodbye Sue! Goodbye Tommy! Thank you so much for these past six months!" Carrie exclaimed, tears in her eyes.

"Oh, don't go doing this, Carrie! If you start crying, then I'll start crying as well!" Sue replied, as the two embraced.

"Go kick evil's ass!" Tommy agreed as he and Carrie exchanged a high-five.

"Look after the little one!" Carrie called out, indicating Sue's rapidly expanding baby bump. She then picked up the bag containing all her personal possessions and bought it out to the car, where Happy sat waiting, patiently.

"Gotta get going, Carrie!" He exclaimed. "Tony's got a big surprise waiting for you!"

This caused Carrie's mind to stop. A surprise? This triggered a bout of skepticism in the young woman. The only time she had ever encountered a surprise was a surprise hazing from the Ultras or a surprise closet session from her insane mother. Then she had to remind herself: _You're not living in Chamberlain any more, Carrie. You are going to go live in New York with someone who is going to look after you and treat you right. This is a good thing._ Carrie then grinned at the security chief.

"Better get going, then!" She joked. She jumped in the back seat of the car and waved goodbye to Sue and Tommy as they, along with Providence itself, disappeared into the rear view as she and Happy set off towards her new life in New York City. They took the I-95 south through New London and into Connecticut, where they passed through New Haven (where they got some drive-thru), Bridgeport and Stamford. Carrie marvelled at the coastal view of the Long Island Sound the interstate offered. Eventually, after just over five hours in the car, they reached their final destination – Avengers Tower. Carrie smiled in delight as she saw the distinctive 'A' logo of the Avengers high in the sky.

Carrie and Happy both got into the elevator and ascended to the top floor, where they stepped into the penthouse.

"Ah! There's my Care-Bear!" Called a voice that could only belong to one person.

"Tony!" Carrie exclaimed as she ran into Tony's arms. "It's so good to see you again!"

"And it's good to have you here, sweetheart." Pepper responded, as she came out from behind a door. Carrie then ran and embraced her as well. "How was your stay in Rhode Island?"

"It was actually pretty nice." Carrie answered, truthfully. It had been a Godsend for her to just get away from the media circus surrounding Chamberlain in the wake of the prom invasion and the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Chris. She had been sentenced to seven years in prison (three for endangering public safety by tampering with the auditorium rigging to set up the bucket of blood with the express purpose of humiliating Carrie, constituting aggravated criminal mischief, and four years for being an accomplice to Billy Nolan's animal cruelty) and her boyfriend Billy had been sentenced to 12 years (nine years for killing the farmer's pig the blood had been obtained from, and three years for assisting Chris in her prank). The trio of her, Sue and Tommy had actually gotten to know each other better in the larger city of Providence, where they could easily blend in. Carrie had actually taken in a job as a volunteer at the city's food bank, in spite of Tony insisting on paying Carrie's share of the bills.

"You said something about a surprise?" Carrie asked, snapping herself out of her thoughts.

"Happy told you that?" Tony asked. "Damnit! I told him to wait until you got here, so I could spring it myself. Remind me to fire him. Kidding!" He chipped in upon seeing Carrie's horrified look. "Anyway, you and me are going to celebrate your first night in New York by going out, seeing the sights and having something to eat! What do you say?"

Carrie was flabbergasted. She was actually going to get to go out and explore one of the biggest cities in the world! Oh sure, she had ventured outside the flat in Providence, but that had mostly been to work at the food bank. Most of the time, she just kept to herself, and Sue and Tommy respected her wishes. But here she had New York City, a city that was orders of magnitude larger than Providence, right at her fingertips. She stared down from the Avengers Tower at the streets below. Traffic crawled along the street as hordes of New Yorkers busied themselves in their everyday lives.

"Let's do it!" Carrie agreed, enthusiastically.

"That's what she said." Tony quipped.

And so, the pair would explore Manhattan. They walked to Times Square, where they gazed upon the large Times Square electronic billboards where Chevrolet, T-Mobile, Coca-Cola and more flashed by. As well, there were news tickers from multiple news agencies broadcasting the news to the day to passers by. This, then, was the American Dream in a nut-shell – the ultimate symbol of freedom of advertising and information. Tony and Carrie also visited Ground Zero, where they stood in silence and paid respects to those who lost their lives in that ghastly event in 2001. They also looked up at the tall Freedom Tower that was built on the site of the old World Trade Centre – a testament to the enduring spirit of Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular. Then they walked around the avenues of Manhattan, where Tony showed her the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the New York Stock Exchange and culminating with the Rockefeller Centre and St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Eventually, they stumbled into a McDonald's, both to grab something to eat and to escape the snow that was falling outside. Carrie had put out her hands and laughed in wonder as the snow came swirling down around her and Tony. Tony had paid for their meals via a self-ordering kiosk, and had taken a number, sitting down waiting for their meals to be delivered. Eventually they were delivered, and both Carrie and Tony got stuck in.

"So, what are you planning to study at college, Carrie?" Tony asked, using the public code word for the Xavier Institute, where Carrie would soon start training to master her powers and be a superhero.

"I've always wanted to study English – that's always been my strong suit." Carrie answered. "I'm also rather interested in history."

"And what about your _special subject_?" Tony asked, emphasising his words so Carrie knew exactly what he meant.

"I know that I have to get it right. That place has produced many wonderful graduates, and I hope to be able to follow in their footsteps." Carrie responded, sincerely.

As this conversation was going on, a couple of people wearing orange and blue New York sports jackets came in and took a seat in the booth behind where Tony and Carrie were sitting. The two newcomers, in a very vociferous manner, began to discuss the ongoing woes of the New York Knicks.

"So, we lost again last night." Declared the first fan, an African-American man. "Wasn't even close."

"Yeah, But we're tanking anyway, so it doesn't matter." Replied his companion, a Latino. "We'll still get a good spot in the draft."

"I know that, but did we have to lose by 24 to freaking DALLAS, who we just traded two of our best players and the injured face of the franchise to?!" Exclaimed the first fan. "At least show some goddamn pride! They just rolled over and laid down like a Catholic schoolboy in the priest's office!"

Carrie was about to step in and chide the first fan for saying something like that about a priest, when Tony distracted her.

"Not here." He simply said. "Finish up, Carrie. We'll discuss this when we get home."

Meanwhile, the first fan was being reprimanded by his companion.

"Yo, homes, that's a bit tasteless, don't you think?" The Latino frowned. The African-American took a deep breath.

"You're right, dog. I'm sorry." He responded. "Look at what the Knicks have done – they've made me compare them to someone in that terrible situation."

Carrie's mind began to swim with thoughts. She considered the words of the African-American sports fan. Terrible things were going on that involved priests and children. In fact, they were sufficiently terrible to make the fan feel ashamed for mentioning them in the context of a sports rant. Even the Ultras, who were quite happy to call her a "Christian freak" at the best of times, had never made a jibe about priests towards her. An uneasy feeling began to take hold in the pit of her stomach.

_Just exactly how terrible is this situation?_ She thought to herself.

Later that evening, Carrie found herself back at the tower, brushing her teeth. As she was finishing up, a morbid curiosity overtook her. She went over to her laptop, went to Google and searched "priests + children". As was traditional with the search engine, it would display a series of autocompleted terms featuring the most searched for uses of the two words. However, Carrie's heart stopped as she looked upon the top term. It contained three words that threatened to tear Carrie's world apart.

_Priest child molester_.

Carrie was torn in two. One of the hand, there was no way, or so she felt, that a man of God was capable of such a thing. On the other hand, no one thought that Margaret White was capable of doing what she was capable of either. And yet, she was, whilst being her own mother. She hesitantly clicked the term, which bought her to the search results. The top result, placed with some prominence, was a Wikipedia article entitled "Catholic Church sex abuse cases".

With a trembling hand, she clicked the link.

Carrie had been through quite a lot in her young life. She had endured abuse in many forms, from both her bullies and her mother. She was also involved with a titanic battle alongside the Avengers to help save her prom from a madman who has hijacked Stark technology. But no cruel sneer from Chris or Tina Blake, no enforced period of closet prayer from her mother, and no maniacal threat from the super villain was as disturbing or horrifying as what she read in that article.

The upshot of the article was that, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, there were many allegations and investigations into sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Many of them had been convicted of their crimes. Cases in the United States, Ireland and Australia seemed to earn the most media coverage, but there were reports from many other countries as well. Whilst the actual percentage of priests publicly implicated in the United States was 4%, which was in and of itself consistent with public statistics on pedophilia, there were two main factors that served to magnify the situation.

The first factor was that many priests had multiple victims, stretching over several decades. This was primarily due to the second and, in Carrie's eyes, the most damning factor – that many priests were moved around between parishes or dioceses – church territories – whenever they had a complaint filed against them. This practice was initiated by many bishops, and this enabled the predators to continue to have unfettered access to children. Carrie found herself struggling to breathe. Bishops were supposed to act as shepherds and protectors of God's people – a role symbolised by a shepherd's crook type object called a crosier which they carried. Carrie couldn't understand why someone with such responsibilities would allow members of their flock to get thrown to the wolves. Even two cardinals were implicated as being involved in abuse.

It was sick. It was disgusting. It was depraved. It was evil. And that was the mere concept of such acts.

When Carrie started reading the actual details, her distress was only amplified.

For example, one of the former cardinals who were implicated had not only abused an altar-boy while he was a priest, he had also made several inappropriate advances towards seminarians during his tenure as a bishop, and later archbishop in New Jersey. The most disturbing allegation against this particular individual was that he had molested the first boy he had ever baptised as a priest. The brave soul had spoken out against the archbishop at a rally in support of abuse survivors.

But it was the revelations from Pennsylvania that really thrust Carrie into disgust, outrage and despair.

A grand jury in the state had conducted investigations into six dioceses in the state – Allentown, Scranton, Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Harrisburg and Erie. Some 300 priests were credibly accused of abuse – which, when combined with figures from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Altoona/Johnstown, which had undergone separate investigations – the total percentage of priests in the state implicated in abuse stood at 8% - double the national average. But it was the details of some of their abuse that served to most anger and disturb Carrie.

For example, a priest stood accused of raping an eight year old girl whilst she was in hospital for a medical procedure. Another priest tied up his victims and beat them with a leather strap. A third had impregnated a young girl and arranged for her to have an abortion. This particular case offended Carrie's sense of morality – she deeply believed in the anti-abortion teachings put forth by the church, and for a priest to organise for one to be had was the height of hypocrisy. And that was the _kindest _sentiment Carrie had for anyone who would do such a thing.

But the tipping point came when she read about the events that had transpired in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. In the 1970's and 80's, the report stated that several priests in the city ran a child pornography ring. The children who were molested and had their pictures taken for use in this ring were given gold crosses to wear, which would easily identify them to other priests who would seek to abuse. They had taken the cross – the symbol of Carrie's Lord and Saviour – and turned it into a symbol of the ultimate perversion. Carrie's head was spinning.

_What…Why…How…When did Satan enter into and corrupt the church I love?_ She thought in horror.

She couldn't take it any longer. Bile and nausea filled her mouth as she rushed over to the small toilet that stood in her en-suite bathroom and vomited the contents of her stomach into the bowl. Carrie was disgusted and physically sick at the thought of sharing a faith with such animals, for anyone who committed acts such as these could not possibly be called human. Despite the fact she could drop a whole building on those involved if she was so inclined, she felt absolutely powerless. So she did the only thing she could do.

She screamed.

It was a long, loud scream into which she placed all her emotions – her anger at the abuse, her heartbreak for the victims, her disgust with the complicity and her despair for the good and true souls such as herself who had to live with such evil in their midst. Carrie placed her hands in the sides of her head as she vented her emotions. However, this also served to set off her volatile powers. Toiletries, soap, and her toothbrush went flying everywhere. A large crack began to appear in the mirror on her right.

"Carrie! What's going on? Are you okay?" Tony asked as he barged into the room to find her sitting there on the floor, her vomit still visible in the toilet bowl and holding her head in her hands.

"Carrie?" Tony murmured, as though she might break at any moment.

What had previously been a loud scream of anger had turned into a long wail of sadness.

"What's going on?! Please tell me!" Tony begged. Still bawling, Carrie pointed a trembling finger at the laptop. He picked it up, and his blood froze when he saw what was on the screen.

"Oh no, baby." He breathed, as he scooped her into his arms. "Oh, come here. Everything's going to be okay."

"Why?" Carrie sobbed. "Why would God let something so horrible happen?"

"I don't know." Tony answered, feeling the same sense of powerlessness that Carrie had. This wasn't his department – in fact, this was so far outside of his department that it wasn't funny. _Nothing_ about this whole affair was funny. The monsters that he fought were supposed to be easy to identify. Big, scaly things that came from outer space. Now you might sit next to one on a bus. Or get served by one at a restaurant. Or, in this case, shake hands with one in church.

Eventually, after a long period of comforting, Tony was able to calm Carrie down and convince her to go to sleep. Later, he was standing in the front of his bedroom, looking out the neon-lit Manhattan night sky.

"Come to bed, dear." Pepper murmured.

"I can't." Tony answered. "Did you know she prayed every day to get out of that hell hole? We were, like, God's answer to her prayers or something. Now that she's found out what some of the brand spokesmen have been up to in their spare time, consumer confidence appears to be shaken."

"I know. But there's nothing you can do about that." Pepper replied.

"Of course there is. I'll go straight to the source." Tony declared, with a renewed determination in his voice. "My daughter deserves some answers about her faith in general and this damn mess in particular, and I'm going to give them to her."

"How?" Pepper wondered. "If you're talking about who I think you are, he probably won't agree to see you unless you're Catholic!"

"Oh, you know me." Tony smirked. "I'm a man with a plan…and I know one too."

*** TCOR ***

Cardinal Joseph McMahon (or, Joseph Cardinal McMahon, if one preferred to use his formal written style) sat behind his mahogany desk in his office. The office was located in his residence which looked onto 1st Avenue, not far from the official headquarters of the Archdiocese Of New York, and a brisk walk several blocks to St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue, where the seat of his authority was located. He silently gave thanks to God for giving him another day on earth to act as a messenger of the Word to his people. The cardinal would still occasionally pinch himself when confronted with the realisation that he, a working class boy from Bloomington, Illinois, now sat as Archbishop of New York, responsible for the guidance and instruction of the 2.8 million professing Catholics within New York City and its' surrounding environs.

Joseph was nine years old when he first discovered his love of the Lord. It was a balmy March day, when winter had just become spring. His mother had told him that he should do something nice for poor old Mr. Gaines from across the street. Mr. Gaines, you see, had what his mama called 'autism'. Mama told him that meant God had made his brain differently, making some parts more powerful while other parts were weaker. For example, he could recite verbatim such treatises as the Gettysburg Address and Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech, but he would struggle to look you in the eye if you said hello. In some areas, he was smarter than the average adult, whilst in others he was as meek as a child - different, to be sure, but by no means lesser.

Anyway, his mama had said that because he couldn't quite say hello to people, he had begun to say hello to animals. Specifically, his pet cat which he had for over ten years. Jasmine, her name was. She had ginger fur, bright yellow eyes and a meow that sounded a warning of terrible destruction if she would not be fed. Unfortunately, Jasmine had become very sick with a kidney issue, and needed to go to the vet so the nice man could send her to live with Jesus. Mama told him that Mr. Gaines would be feeling very sad right about now, and that he should pray to God to help him be happy. Joseph knew this was a task that would be easier said than done. Getting someone to stop being sad was just like his mama telling him to smile for a family photo while he was wearing one of those annoying bow-ties – it would not be done on the first time.

So he found himself alone, on his knees praying. He prayed for God to make Mr. Gaines happy again, and asked him to send a sign if he wanted something to be done for him. As he crossed himself and got up to leave, he tripped over – he had been so consumed in what he was doing he had forgot to tie his shoelaces! As Joseph lay there on the floor, embarrassed, he noticed he had knocked over a set of pipe-cleaners. A thought came to his head. He began to fashion a rather crudely made small cat out of the pipe-cleaners, complete with small paws and whiskers. God may have taken Mr. Gaines' cat away from him, but he had given him the sign to make him a new one. When he had completed the project, he took it across the street and knocked on Mr. Gaines' door.

There emerged a man Joseph guessed was about thirty – younger than his father but older than his older brother Mark, who had worked with his dad in their car repair shop before leaving town to attend university in Los Angeles. Joseph saw in that man's face and eyes both anxiety and confidence, both wonder and knowledge, both simplicity and complication, both vacancy and fullness.

"I…I made this for you." Joseph began, filling the silence. He then offered the pipe-cleaner cat to Mr. Gaines. "Mama said you're sad about your cat. You can keep this one forever."

"For…me…?" Mr. Gaines spoke, hesitantly. He took the cat from his hands and turned it over in his hands, as though he was evaluating it in a scientific manner. He touched the cat's little paws and flicked its whiskers. Slowly but surely, a look of child-like wonder began to spread across his face as he smiled widely.

"It's a new Jasmine!" He exclaimed happily as he held the pipe-cleaner creation high in the light of the sun.

"God bless you, sir." Joseph spoke, sincerely. And it was at that very moment that he heard it – the moment that he felt called by the Almighty to be a priest. For, in that moment, Mr. Gaines, who had until that moment, been rejoicing like a child in his new-found companion, broke out of his reverie and began to speak, in the most clear tone he had heard anyone speak:

"_Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae,_

_Et In Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicrum, Dominum nostrum…"_

He could hardly believe it. Here was this…this marvel of a human being, who had just been fawning over an animal made of pipe-cleaners, speaking in the language of the church, of emperors, of philosophers, of poets! He marvelled at Mr. Gaines' note-perfect pronunciation of the Creed, and at the brain that both enabled him to look at the world with childlike wonder and gave him the ability to give the appropriate glory. He concluded that such a mind was only possible thanks to the Almighty. And he felt happy that he was able to offer comfort to someone who was suffering. He remembered a lesson he had learned in school about St. Francis Of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order who was well known for his charity and selflessness. They had taught him a prayer, said to be inspired by his example, in which the speaker asked God to work through them to serve others. One line in particular jumped out at him.

_For it is in giving that we receive._

He had been able to serve and comfort Mr. Gaines, and that, in turn, made him happy. He made the decision, there and then, that he would grow up to become a priest, so he could instruct and serve others. So he put his mind to it, started praying every day, paid more attention in church as he went through his childhood. While Beatlemania gripped his local high school and everyone was swooning over John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he was studying the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis Of Assisi. Finally, the day came when he graduated from high school and he informed his parents that he was off to Chicago – not just to attend university, but to enter the seminary to train for the priesthood. His mother was overjoyed that he had heard and answered God's call in his life.

His father, however, was a different matter altogether.

He ranted and raved about how the church was full of nothing but rich hypocrites living in ivory towers while taking the money of working class people like him and his brother. Evidently, he had tried to get along with his Catholic mother for the sake of their family. However, that had clearly failed, and now the roost was about to be empty, he felt comfortable in giving his honest opinion. He claimed that the church spoke a dead language to try and keep the rest of their sheep in line, and that they were hypocrites for preaching charity and civility when they wouldn't even face the congregation directly. Nothing Joseph hadn't heard before, when he declared his intention to his friends to enter the priesthood – even though by now, Vatican Ii's reforms had kicked in and that was no longer the case. However, then came a remark that crossed the line and severed the link between father and son, for good.

"It was bad enough that you say God told you to take my pipe-cleaners, which _I _paid for with _my _money, and so I had to give you the belt for that. But you had to go and make them into a cat and give it to that fucking imbecile across the street and-"

His father's rant was discontinued by the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Joseph had punched his father in the face, leaving him with a black eye. Both parents looked at him in shock.

"DON'T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT MR. GAINES LIKE THAT!" He yelled, before turning his back and heading up to his room to get his possessions.

"Joseph, wait…" His mother protested.

"IF YOU WALK OUT THAT DOOR, DON'T COME BACK!" His father yelled, recovering from the shock of being punched in the face by his own son. Joseph, however, ignored his father's anger and his mother's pleas as he walked out the door. As far as he was now concerned, God above was his father, the Blessed Virgin Mary was his mother and all God's people his brothers and sisters. And it was with this resolve that he boarded the Greyhound bus from Bloomington to Chicago, where he would start his new life in service of God and the church. Once off the bus in Chicago, he sought out a church to confess his sins, both to return to a state of grace for his entry to the seminary and to show his remorse to his mother that the last memory she would have of her son would be punching her husband.

Joseph put his head down and studied harder than he had ever studied before. The qualifications required for one to become a priest were essentially equal to a PhD in philosophy so he was required to essentially undertake seven years of study – three years of philosophy and theology study at Loyola University followed by four years at the seminary. After those seven years were up, he was ordained as a transitional deacon, where he was required to act as an assistant to an ordained priest in preparation for final elevation to the priesthood. After much preparation and prayer, the newly ordained Father McMahon was welcomed to the eternal priesthood at Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral in the week of Pentecost 1977.

His first assignment was a church that was attached to a Catholic high school. Accordingly, he was also appointed the school chaplain. If there ever was a time to _not_ be associated with a school, it was during the year 1977. For, you see, that was the year of _Star Wars_. Accordingly, Father McMahon's preaching was often interrupted by interjections based around the movie. (Example: "_But Jesus said: I have a very bad feeling about this._") Also, he had to deal with endless jokes about how Pontus Pilate had actually declared Jesus to be "a member of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor." This would usually be accompanied by sound effects that the good father felt approximated an asthmatic vacuum cleaner. He was able to eventually connect these references to pop culture to the church's teachings and beliefs, which earned him a rapport with the students. For example, during a week of prayer for the unborn child timed to coincide with the anniversary of Roe vs Wade, he had put this quote on the church billboard:

"_I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."_

Eventually, the St. Michael's billboards became famous for their combination of pop culture and spirituality, a feat not commonly associated with the Catholic Church. And for anyone who offered criticism of this, Father McMahon had this rather choice quote from the Dark Lord for their consumption: "_I find your lack of faith disturbing."_

After four years as chaplain at St. Michael's, Father McMahon announced his intention to study theology and canon law at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome. After four years studying overseas and earning his doctorate in theology, he returned to active ministry, this time presiding over parishes in Burbank and Des Plaines, as well as returning to Chicago for a brief stint as parish pastor of Holy Name Cathedral. Then, after 15 years in the priesthood, he finally got his big break – he was appointed and consecrated as Auxillary Bishop of Chicago in August 1994, followed by his appointment as Bishop of Springfield, Illinois a year later. Both his consecration in Chicago, as well as his installation at the Cathedral Of The Immaculate Conception in Springfield were presided over by the outgoing Bishop of Springfield, the Archbishop of Chicago, in whose archdiocese he was ordained and the Bishop of Peoria, the head of the diocese that was his sponsor for the priesthood and which also housed his home town of Bloomington.

Due to his elevation to bishop, the newly-consecrated Bishop McMahon had the right to choose for himself an episcopal motto. This motto would remain with him all throughout his time as a bishop, wherever he went, and would act as a personal mission statement of sorts. He chose "_Quis Est Meus Proximus"_ meaning "Who Is My Neighbour?", which referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan and was the question asked of Christ by a man in a crowd which prompted the telling of the parable. He saw it as his mission to help people in need, wherever it was the nine year old boy showing off his newly made cat to Mr. Gaines, or the newly-ordained priest and chaplain who offered counselling to troubled youth, or the rector offering prayers for the lives of Americans killed in the Gulf War and the (first) World Trade Centre bombing inside Holy Name Cathedral.

The toughest task facing the newly-minted bishop within the diocese was how to speak to a generation that had been jaded by rampant consumerism and a millennial generation that generally held what he considered to be a bleaker outlook on life and demanding radical change, thanks to the advent of grunge music and bands such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Rage Against The Machine. He increased funding to both the Catholic school system in the diocese, as well as promoting more vocations, hoping to encourage the next generation to give up their dreams of darkness and violence and follow in his path by serving the one true God. Results on this were mixed – while there was no noticeable uptick in young people showing interest in either a seminary or a convent, he had received reports from his priests that the youth were more willing to confide in them about their fears for the future.

His toughest challenges whilst Bishop of Springfield came about from factors outside of his official purview. The first was the death of his father. Whilst he would not describe him as abusive, there was little doubt that he took great relish in disciplining him and his older brother, whether that was with the belt, the switch or his bare hands. And yet, Bishop McMahon felt remorse that he was unable to proclaim his own personal forgiveness to him. The moment he had learnt of his death had been the first time he had spoken to his older brother in some 30 years. Whilst his responsibilities kept him from attending the funeral, he sent a personal letter of condolence and forgiveness on his personal letterhead to his mother, now a widow, which was read aloud during the funeral service. How their marriage had lasted that long, he hadn't the slightest clue.

The second challenge was the death of Mr. Gaines. Brian Gaines – to give the man the dignity of his full name – and Bishop McMahon had kept a very close friendship since the day Joseph gave him the gift of Jasmine. The two frequently exchanged letters since he left Bloomington to enter the priesthood, and the bishop had found his letters surprisingly eloquent. Evidently, he was better able to express himself through writing than through speech. Among the things that the bishop learnt was that he did not like anyone saying he "had" autism. He described himself as an autistic person who took a keen interest in his faith, history and philosophy. When the bishop learned that he was in hospice care, he went and visited him. Brian had given him a beaming smile as he turned around in his bed to kiss his ring. He stuttered and stumbled as he tried to call him "Your Excellency", but Joseph had stopped him and insisted that he call him by his name – he was still that nice young boy. It touched the bishop greatly to notice that Jasmine still sat on Brian's bedside table, acting as a silent companion.

It was the last time the two would ever speak.

Bishop McMahon would act as a concelebrant at Brian's requiem Mass in Bloomington, after obtaining the permission of the Bishop of Peoria, due to their close friendship. The church was packed with family and friends, all of whom praised Brian as a vibrant and joyful individual who viewed his autism as a gift, not a curse. Nobody wore black to the service, at his request – instead, they wore all the colours of the rainbow. His coffin was carried out of the church to the strains of The Beatles' _Yellow Submarine_ – one of his favourite songs, and also quite fitting, considering his coffin was painted a bright yellow. It was a moving experience, which would be topped off by a package he received in the mail when he returned to Springfield. It was Jasmine, returned to him by the stipulation of Brian's will, who reassured His Excellency that he did not need it anymore, as he would soon be reunited with the real thing in heaven. Bishop McMahon would keep Jasmine on his desk always, as a token of their friendship and the sign of his calling. This also spurred on his initiatives to include those with intellectual disabilities in church life – initiatives he continued from Springfield into Rochester, New York and ultimately into the Archdiocese of New York itself.

But his next post, as Bishop of Rochester, would bring him face to face with the toughest tasks of his career – the twin horrors of September 11, 2001 and the priest molestation scandal. The former saw him act as comforter to a traumatised and terrified community, who realised straight away that that was The Day That Everything Changed. Certainly, America had sustained losses at Pearl Harbour, but that was during wartime. This had been an attack on every peace loving American who just wanted to live their lives. On the flip side, the abuse scandal bought the usually optimistic bishop to his knees, as he was forced to confront just how badly the church had failed its' most vulnerable members. The shepherds had allowed wolves to snatch their sheep, and should be held accountable.

And it was Bishop McMahon's greatest regret to include himself in that assessment.

It was during April 2003, when the bishop received a letter from his successor as Bishop of Springfield. In it, it was revealed that his name was mentioned during an inquiry held by the diocese into clerical sex abuse in their territory. Specifically, it was mentioned in connection to concerns expressed about a priest at a parish in Kincaid, Illinois and how the Bishop had never made contact with the concerned parties after promising that he would. At first, the bishop struggled to remember this incident – after all, he took a great number of meetings during his tenure. Slowly, but surely, the memory started to come back to him.

And he remembered. Oh, how he remembered.

It was June 1997. He was about to fly to Rome to deliver the annual report on the state of the diocese, when he received a phone call. The speaker identified herself as a member of the PTA at a Catholic high school in Kincaid and expressed great concern about a particular priest in the area. Bishop McMahon had been in a hurry to get to the airport, and so he offered to put the woman in touch with his secretary. However, the parent insisted on speaking to him. The exact nature of these concerns was not specified over the phone, but it was insisted they were of the utmost urgency. The bishop, more out of desperation to make his flight than any lack of desire to speak to her, promised that he would speak to her about this topic when he returned. However, due to the large number of duties a bishop had to carry out, as well as the personal losses going on in his life, the issue had never been bought up again. The priest in question stood accused of molesting a number of children between 1986-98.

To say that the bishop was devastated would be an understatement. He had come to the priesthood to protect and instruct his flock, not to hurt them! But hurt them he had, by his own inaction. Even though the evidence was inconclusive as to whether any of the alleged victims were initially abused after his dismissal of the parent, he knew in his heart that one was too many, and abuse had been happening under his nose, and he had failed to act.

So, it was with a heavy heart that he picked up his official stationery and began to compose a letter to His Holiness Pope John Paul II. In it, he offered his resignation as Bishop of Rochester for his failure to act to prevent abuse in the Diocese of Springfield. It was the only thing he could do. It was the right thing to do. It was the _Christian _thing to do. As time went by and he awaited the reply, he began to contemplate what the future held for him. Maybe he could return to Bloomington and become a simple priest once again, and spend some time with his mother in her twilight years with the occasional visit to the graves of both his father and his friend Brian.

Eventually, he received the reply. To his absolute shock, the Holy Father had _not _accepted his resignation. The reason given, after discussion with the Diocese of Springfield was that the complainant in question had not made a concrete accusation of abuse, but had instead made vague allusions to "concerning conduct". As far as the Vatican was concerned, it was up to the victims or anyone acting in their interests to come forward, not for the bishop to go to them. On these grounds, the Pope had ruled that Bishop McMahon's failure to follow up the phone call did not constitute a failure to act, given that he had no credible knowledge of the abuse of the priest in question.

The first thing Bishop McMahon did was call a press conference. He explained that he had received a phone call about the priest in question, but had not followed it up due to the huge workload he had as bishop, as well as personal issues in his life. He offered an unconditional apology to the people of Springfield as well as the people of the Diocese in general. He revealed that he had offered his resignation to the Vatican, but that it was not accepted, and that he would continue to serve as Bishop of Rochester, in obedience to the wishes of His Holiness. Lastly, he offered an apology to the victims of the priest in question.

"I did not ordain the snake who stole your lives away. I did not welcome him into the diocese. But I should have stopped him. And, for that, I am eternally sorry beyond words. No longer will I put reports of abuse on the back burner. The Diocese of Rochester, as well as any other diocese that will be entrusted to me by the grace of God, will henceforth be the most loyal friend to those who have suffered in such a way, and the most bitter enemy of those who would perpetrate such loathsome acts. I urge all those in the Diocese who have suffered or are suffering to come forward. You will be listened to, believed and loved."

The media scrutiny, predictably, was intense. Thankfully, much of the scrutiny seemed to focus on the quality of training for dealing with abuse cases in the priesthood, as well as the lack of a specialist department within dioceses to deal with this matter, which caused the overworked bishop to overlook the report. However, that did not stop his mother from succumbing to a fatal heart attack the day after the press conference, doubtless bought on by her heartbreak that her beloved Joseph was mired in this whole mess. Bishop McMahon, wisely, chose not to attend the funeral. He would be nothing but a distraction, and besides, it was nothing less than what he deserved. But the sadness he felt was nothing compared to what he felt as he listened to victims of priests tell their stories. He could do nothing but listen to their stories, their anger and their criticism, and learn from them. The new Bishop Joseph McMahon would do things differently. He quickly established one of the most stringent zero tolerance policies in the country, as well as creating a diocesan compensation fund for use by the victims and their families. He began regularly meeting with victims advocacy groups and fought to advance their interests with the church hierarchy. He supported an independent investigation into Rochester's handling of abuse cases past and present, looking for areas to improve.

This all came about because of one particularly harrowing letter he had read. One that he still kept, and one that would serve as his reminder to stay vigilant against this evil.

_Your Excellency._

_You don't know me. In fact, based on what I've read about you, much of what I'm about to discuss in this letter happened either just before or just after you became a priest. So, do not think for a second that I am blaming you for what happened. I was actually inspired to do this by watching you on the news._

_My name is Marvin. That's me in the photo, in the Batman costume. My brother Joshua is on the right, as Superman. Besides superheroes, the one thing we grew up idolising above all else was the church. With this in mind, Joshua and I volunteered as altar servers at St. Andrew's in Brighton, New York. The priest, Father Harlan, seemed to be genuinely nice at first. He would tell us jokes to put us at ease, insisted we call him by his first name when not in clerical garb, and was generally very helpful in explaining the ins and outs of the process of being an altar server. The whole family came to church for our first Mass as servers. We were so proud. We would go on like this for about a year. Father Harlan quickly became a friend of the family._

_Then…it happened._

_It was a Wednesday night. Father Harlan had decided to treat the entire altar server roster to a night out at the local swimming pool. I mean, what young boy doesn't like to splash around in the water? So, we're all there, having a good time. Then Father Harlan asked Joshua and I to come down to the changing room to search for something he had left behind. So, we're walking to the changing room and we're searching for whatever it was he said he lost – I think it was his car keys. When we couldn't find them, Joshua and I turned to leave, only to find the doors locked. I'll never forget the words he spoke next._

"_Marvin, Josh.' He had said. "We're friends, right?"_

"_Yeah." We both answered._

"_Well, this is what friends do." Came his answer._

_What happened next, Your Excellency, can only be described as sexual abuse and rape._

_He told me that friends "make each other happy". He then pushed his penis in my face and told me to make him happy with my hands. And my mouth. He even talked me through it, as though he were teaching me to ride a bike. Once he figured that I had made him happy enough, he walked over to Joshua and told him that since I had made him happy, he was going to make Joshua happy._

_Except he didn't make him happy. I still remember his crying to this day. There was blood all over his swimmers. It was awful. _

_Then he walked us out of the changing room and told everyone that Joshua had had an accident and he was taking us to the hospital. Then he told us to keep quiet or lie to our parents._

_And so began the hell that our adolescence would become. Every month, Father Harlan would take us to the pool. And every visit would follow the same pattern._

_Swim. Search. Rape. Swim. Search. Rape. Swim. Search. Rape._

_By the third or fourth time, neither of us cried. We just accepted that it was going to happen. It would always proceed the same – he would have one of us suck or stroke him to get him ready, then he would go and rape the other. By my counting, if you divide each component of the abuse into two separate acts, Joshua and I had been abused or raped about 50 times between us by the time we aged out of the altar server program at age 15._

_Now you might ask: how did he get away with this in the middle of a public pool? Good question. I'll come back to that later._

_When we were about to graduate high school, Joshua and I had both agreed to go to our parents and tell them about what had been going on. However, they didn't believe us. Father Harlan, apparently, had got there first. He had spun some story about how we were upset that he had caught us having sex with each other, and that we had blackmailed him with saying that he had molested us to stay quiet. In a conservative Catholic household, guess who was believed – the fine, upstanding man of God, or the incestuous Sodomite brothers? Hint: it wasn't the latter._

_So, we were kicked out of our family. It had contrasting effects on each of us. For myself, it served as a wake up call for me that the only person I could rely on was myself. I put my nose in my books, graduated from Syracuse, and met the woman who is now my lovely, affirming wife. She worked with me through my issues, and I'm just about at peace with what happened – well, as much as one can be._

_What I'll never be at peace with, though, is what happened to Joshua._

_He was counting on our family to support him and help him through it. When he didn't get that support, he found it somewhere else. Namely, drugs. My brother pushed me out of his life as he became an addict. Then one night, I got the call that every brother dreads. Joshua was dead. He had overdosed on heroin in a back alley somewhere in Syracuse. October 25, 1986. I'll never forget that night – it was also Game 6 of the World Series between the Mets and the Red Sox. Whilst the rest of the state of New York remembers that night for an entirely different reason, I'll always remember that night as the night my brother died alone, in a dark desolate place._

_Which brings me to my request, Your Excellency - I've put this photo in the letter. Lately, I've been looking at it and I can't stop thinking about Father Harlan's voice, his hands on my neck, his body crushing me. And I can't stop thinking about what happened to Joshua. So please, Your Excellency, take it. I can't look at it anymore without thinking of the abuse and all that followed._

_At least one good thing came out of this. You remember wondering how he got away with it in such a public place? Well, turns out he had recruited a lifeguard at the pool. He wasn't getting paid much, so Father Harlan paid him to provide him with a key to the locker rooms, in case he lost something. Of course it was provided to him – nobody said no to a priest in those days. He got wise to what was going on when Father Harlan left his wallet behind after one of our little "adventures" and found a photo of us in our altar-server dress. He put that together with the fact that he kept seeing the three of us disappear, coupled with the strange "accidents" that would close the locker room for cleaning each time he and the altar-servers visited the pool. Turns out that when he learnt what he had been using the room for, he couldn't live with the guilt and tried to kill himself. In his suicide note, he exposed Father Harlan as a pedophile and that he had given him the means with which to do so. Sucks for him that he was revived at the scene._

_He was able to co-operate with the police and eventually they managed to secure a warrant to search his residence. When they did, they found a diary in which he luridly described his conquests. Turns out that he would have monthly meetings with each of the members of our altar-serving group, which he would use as his opportunity to molest or rape them. Eventually, they filed over 200 charges related to either specific rape or lewd acts with minors._

_Now Father Harlan is where he belongs – serving a life sentence in Attica. He will die in prison. No thanks to the then Bishop of Rochester, who sat alongside him up to and including his sentence and who never once offered an apology._

_Lastly, I want to give my thoughts on what you said on the TV. Everybody makes mistakes, Your Excellency. For example, I made the mistake of trusting Father Harlan. But what defines people are not their mistakes, but by what happens next. I did not let my abuse define me, and now I'm happily married. Don't let what you did then define you – fight for us now._

Bishop McMahon took it all in. The actions of one of his so-called brothers in faith had destroyed the bonds of family and fraternity of two true brothers forever. This was not only done by the vile acts themselves, but by also concocting a lie that the Prince Of Darkness would be proud to call his own. And one of the brothers had fallen so far into darkness and despair that he had taken his own life – an experience that had so scarred his brother that he had begged him to take possession of a family keepsake, a memory which had been tainted forever.

Boys don't cry, his tough-talking father had told him. Such behaviour was often punished by a beating in his family home. But here, the bishop was safe, as all these revelations had caused him to put his head in his hands and cry for the first time in his life. Tears splashed onto the silver ring which he wore to symbolise his episcopal authority. Bishop McMahon could not help but dread that a similar fate awaited those who had been harmed by his inadvertent inaction. _Did any of the children in Springfield suffer like this because of me?_ He thought bitterly.

Another area that he sought to improve was his relationships with the youth of the diocese. Sure, he had been able to make sly Darth Vader quips when he was chaplain and priest at St. Michael's in Chicago, but the sheer administrative nature of the role of bishop had served to make him feel somewhat distant from the younger generation. This had partly been because of a public statement that he had made whilst Bishop of Springfield that young people of faith would find more joy in serving the church than in campaigning for radical change in society, a response to the emergence of politically charged anti-establishment music groups like Public Enemy. Now, in light of the scandal, he understood that these young people actually had the right idea – who was Christ, after all, if not a radical campaigner? He would start meeting quarterly with youth groups at various parishes in the diocese and supported them in their social justice causes, as well as hosting an annual youth conference where they could share their thoughts on the state of the church and the world. This resulted in him having a lot of support from the youth by the time he left the diocese, in spite of his more traditional orthodox stances on topics such as abortion and gay marriage.

Response to Bishop McMahon's handling of the abuse scandal was mixed. Whilst some of his reforms were perceived as being too little too late (which he did not dispute), victims groups appreciated his willingness to meet with them and advance their cause, as well as his honesty about his mistakes – which was more than could be said about certain other bishops of that era.

It was with great shock that Bishop McMahon received the news that he had been appointed Archbishop of New York. Oh, he had heard rumours about his name being on a shortlist, but he figured that the Supreme Pontiff would appoint an already established archbishop to oversee this important territory. In addition, he felt that his admission concerning the Diocese of Springfield had disqualified him from such a prestigious position – not that he would ever publicly state so. His Holiness, however, clearly felt differently. And so it was the the newly-minted Archbishop McMahon found himself staring at the white pallium band he was now allowed to wear as a metropolitan archbishop in disbelief. Not only was he now Archbishop of New York, but he was also the metropolitan leader of the Ecclesiastical Province of New York, which included the archdiocese at the top, but also the suffragan dioceses of Albany, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Ogdensburg, Rockville Centre, Syracuse and his former seat of Rochester. Whilst all these dioceses had their own bishops, his status as metropolitan granted him certain privileges and responsibilities, such as being able to celebrate Mass anywhere within the Province, reporting misconduct by bishops to Rome and being able to call a council of all eight bishops of the Province, including himself.

So, he had all this on his plate. And then the Chitauri came.

It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Large scaled creatures descended from a hole in the sky, as though they were the armies of the devil himself. He did the only thing he could do – he threw open the doors to every church property under his jurisdiction to act as a safe haven to all people, regardless of faith or lack thereof. Then he saw perhaps the most wondrous thing he had ever seen – a group of truly-gifted people made their stand against the forces of evil. And by "gifted", he didn't mean they had the gift of speech. They had tremendous, unforeseen powers that made them appear as if they were angels of the Lord – super strength, mastering the art of flight through the magic of human innovation, unerring aim with a bow and arrow and being able to unleash the monster within – literally. They, like St. Michael the Archangel, had beaten back the enemy and won victory over evil. Even though he had raised his eyebrows at their dubbing themselves the Avengers, for he was a firm believer in the words of Deuteronomy that vengeance was reserved for the Almighty, he knew that these men – and one woman – were on the side of the angels.

It was said that the leadership and comfort he gave the city after the Battle Of New York had been a major factor in the decision of Pope Francis to create him cardinal. Archbishop McMahon was stunned. He, a boy from a working-class family who discovered his love of God and the Church when he had done something nice for a suffering neighbour, a member of the esteemed and august body that was the College Of Cardinals? Impossible! But sure enough, there he was, kissing the Pope's fisherman's ring, the symbol of the mission of all servants of the church to act as fishers of souls, as Jesus had instructed the apostle Peter. Then right there, in St. Peter's Basilica at the consistory in front of his soon to be fellow cardinals, he received his scarlet biretta hat and gold ring from the Supreme Pontiff. He was now officially Cardinal McMahon. As the Pope placed the biretta on his head, he had some private words for his newest cardinal.

"Who is my neighbour?" The Pope had told him, referencing his personal motto. "All of God's holy people are your neighbours. Remember them always."

Snapping out of his reverie, he reprimanded himself for getting lost in thought. He thought that one of his biggest weaknesses. Cardinal McMahon crossed himself and offered a prayer both for himself and the people of New York City as they went about their work. He was just about to get started when he was interrupted by Sister Paula, a nun from the Sisters Of Mercy who acted as the cardinal's secretary.

"Your Eminence." She spoke. "Steve Rogers is on line one."

"Oh, Sister, come off it." He replied. "April Fools isn't for another couple of months. Now, seriously, who is it?"

"It's actually Steve Rogers, Your Eminence." Came Sister Paula's reply.

The cardinal scoffed. No doubt this was the work of some juvenile prankster, wishing to engage him on the matter of running refrigerators or inquiring if he knew a cleric by the name of Father Hugh Jazz. Sure, he enjoyed the odd joke, but not when it involved the official means of communication. Cardinal McMahon smiled wryly. He was going to nip this in the bud, and do so with good grace and humour.

"I'll handle this. Put him through." He stated. Sure enough, the phone then began to ring. The cardinal picked up the receiver and began to speak.

"Now listen here!" He declared in a voice befitting of his authority. "This phone line is reserved for official Archdiocese business. So if this is your idea of a joke-"

"Your Eminence." The voice interrupted. "This really is Captain Steve Rogers."

The senior clergyman froze. The voice on the other end was unmistakable – he had heard it often enough over his tenure in New York. Everywhere from news reports to press conferences to even a silly video he had approved to be shown in the Archdiocese's schools. This was indeed Captain America, or as the cheesy marketing of the wartime era put it, the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan. Even though the Captain had gone in the ice before he was born, Cardinal McMahon remembered seeing a series of posters depicting him punching out Hitler and standing guard over America with his starred shield. Patriotism, loyalty and valour – the principles of one nation, under God, made human flesh. He remembered his mother regaling with wild tales about how the Captain fought bravely and used his great strength to turn the tide against the Nazis. Whilst part of him disagreed with the experiment that gave him his powers, due to his belief that it violated the church's teachings on interfering with the human body, there was no doubt that it all worked out in the end. But there was still some doubt in His Eminence's mind. The Captain was a public figure, and therefore many things about him, including his voice, were easily recognisable and imitable. The cardinal then tested him out with an obscure question, the answer to which any prankster would have neither the time nor the inclination to research.

"What was the late Cardinal Spellman's episcopal motto, in the original Latin?" He challenged, invoking the name of the most famous American Catholic of the Captain's era.

"_Sequere Deum_." Came the Captain's voice, clear as day. "It meant 'Follow God'. And that's _Archbishop_ Spellman to me – he wasn't a cardinal when I went off to war."

"So, it is really you." Cardinal McMahon relaxed. "May I just say that I was on your side during that little incident you had in Germany last winter. The proposed regulation and government affiliation of super-powered people sounds too close to organising a private army for my liking, and I'm glad somebody took a stand. Also, you can thank your little friend from the other side for exposing the videos of the Raft prison. The treatment of your allies there was beyond immoral, and it needed to be exposed."

"Well, I can neither confirm nor deny that the videos were leaked by the other side." Steve replied. "But that's not why I called. I'm calling on behalf of Tony Stark."

The cardinal was confused. Tony Stark wanted to talk to him? Scratch that – Tony Stark wanted to talk to _any _clergyman? He had never met the man, but based on his public persona, he was as decadent and irreverent as Captain America was the opposite.

"Ah! Let me guess: he probably wants me to bless his hot tub or something equally asinine." He spoke.

"This is serious, Your Eminence." Steve insisted. "It's about his daughter."

"Daughter? He doesn't have a daughter." Cardinal McMahon answered. "Unless…he and his wife are expecting?"

"No. He adopted a girl from Maine. Her name's Carrie." The Captain offered.

"That's an awfully Christian thing to do." The cardinal pondered. _Maybe I should inquire into whether Lucifer has purchased a zamboni, because Hell appears to have frozen over._ He added mentally.

"Well, you would think so, seeing as she's a member of the faith." Steve answered.

Cardinal McMahon was dumbstruck. The notoriously irreligious billionaire had found room in his heart to take a lost child of God into his home. He thought that perhaps this girl could change Tony Stark's heart for the better.

"So…this Carrie, she resides with him now? I suppose he wants me to give her a welcome to the Archdiocese or something." He wondered.

"Yes, Your Eminence. Well…not just that." Steve confirmed.

"What do you mean by that?" The cardinal wondered.

"Well, Carrie's had a very hard life." Steve began. "Her biological father's not in the picture, and her mother's schizophrenic and has been committed. She was very controlling. In fact, I would even go so far as to say she was abusive towards her."

Abusive? Cardinal McMahon tensed up at that statement. _BOYS DON'T CRY! _He recalled the voice of his father as he was given the belt for the heinous offence of daring to cry when his Chicago Cubs had suffered a particularly tough loss. Whilst he doubted that this Carrie's mother was anywhere near as physical as his old man, he had learnt over the years that not all abuse was physical and he had come to terms with the fact that the beatings he had gotten were not relished discipline, as his younger self thought, but physical abuse – for no parent should take such joy in discipline.

"What sort of abuse?" The cardinal asked, dreading the answer.

"I'm not at liberty to say." Steve told him. "That's her story to tell, if she so chooses. But I think it's pretty safe to say that she was pretty isolated from the world, thanks to her mother. She didn't even know what a TV was until we met her. Your Eminence…she knows about the abuse scandal. Couple this with her own background and well, she's not exactly jumping for joy to be a Catholic right about now."

Cardinal McMahon let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes. Of course it would be this. It would always be this. And he felt that was exactly what the church in general and himself in particular deserved – to be forced to answer for their most grievous fault until the end of time. If someone who was connected to the world viewed the church with skepticism and suspicion in light of these events, how would someone who was cut off from the world and who thought that people of faith could do no wrong think?

"So, Mr. Stark wishes for me to speak to her and assuage her fears about joining with the church community here in New York." He concluded.

"Well, yes." Steve answered. "But Tony and I think she needs some answers as to why it all happened. She had been praying to get out of that town for ages. She thinks God finally answered her prayers, and then she finds out something like this. I don't know what exactly went on, but Tony told me she was very disturbed and distressed – she even wondered why God allowed this to happen. I know Tony's not perfect, but he'll do anything for anybody he loves. And he does love her, Your Eminence. He loves her as though she were his own child."

The cardinal felt his heart break. Carrie had clearly been through several difficulties in her young life, and she had clung to her faith to guide her through the storm. It seemed to him that her mother had failed her by keeping her hidden from the world. And now the Catholic Church, in its role as the spiritual mother of all believers, had failed to offer her comfort and security, even though there was no evidence that Carrie had been victimised by a priest. Cardinal McMahon then thought of the "My Brother's Keeper" campaign, a joint initiative between the Archdiocese of New York and the NYPD to appeal to both survivors of abuse and those who suspected it was occurring to come forward. To those who had been abused, it was a call to courage and to prevent any others from falling prey to these abhorrent actions. And for those who had suspicions, it was a call to their Christian duty to protect the innocent. It had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams – not only did many survivors speak out and tell their stories, it also served to foster a sense of empathy, support and fellowship among those survivors and the people of the Archdiocese and amongst the youth in particular. A Catholic youth group linked to NYU had begun an annual Christmas charity drive for the victim advocacy group SNAP – the Survivor's Network Of Those Abused by Priests.

The campaign was named for the words of Cain in the book of Genesis: "_Am I my brother's keeper?_" The cardinal had thrown the full weight of the Archdiocese's significant resources behind the campaign, placing posters inside all churches and Catholic institutions under his jurisdiction, including in St. Patrick's Cathedral itself. He had also purchased ad space on local TV stations during events of interest, such as Yankees games and the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Archdiocese and NYPD jointly purchased advertising spaces on public transport as well as at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden – though these were smaller ads that simply featured the URL for the campaign's website alongside the logos of the two sponsors. The posters and TV ads all had the same theme – a young boy and girl bravely shepherding each other through a dark forest filled with nightmarish creatures to signify the terror of abuse and eventually emerging into the light to signify transparency and the security offered by an archdiocese reformed that would trust and believe them. The campaign included a quote spoken by Cardinal McMahon, in written form on the poster and audio-visual form in the TV ad, during the unveiling of the campaign alongside the head of the NYPD's Special Victims Division outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

"_An infamous man once said: am I my brother's keeper? In repudiation of the first evil and all evil committed in the name of God, I say yes. For we are all our brother's keeper._"

The cardinal had taken his words to heart. As the head of the Archdiocese of New York, he was the shepherd of every single practising Catholic in the city and the surrounding regions. He was their keeper. And he vowed that he would be Carrie's keeper as well, to give her comfort and security in her new church home.

"Okay. I will meet with Carrie." Cardinal McMahon promised. "I can squeeze her in tomorrow afternoon."

"Thank you, Your Eminence." Steve answered. "I'll be praying for you to say the right thing."

"I appreciate your prayers, Captain." The cardinal answered. "And for her sake, I will pray for our Lord's guidance and wisdom."

The phone call ended, and Cardinal McMahon threw himself into the work of the day. However his mind was looking forward to tomorrow, where he would turn from the efficient and powerful administrator and authority figure to the simple comforter of a troubled soul – a role that he had carried out since he picked up those pipe-cleaners in Bloomington as a boy, through to his admission of his mistake in Springfield and his promise to do better, to his unceasing fight for survivors like Marvin, to his call for Christian bravery on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

He just prayed that God would be with him.

*** TCOS ***

Carrie had spent the night and much of the next day in a state of numbness. That was the only state that she could truly inhabit, for if she did not make herself numb, she would break down and cry in despair over the horrific revelations she had encountered. Images of shepherds with knives instead of crooks, a lamb with the head of a wolf and an angel spouting the horns and fangs of a demon danced and flashed in her head, giving her nightmares. The discovery was made on a Wednesday, which meant that Carrie was still having a sleepless night headed into Friday. More significantly, this was the start of the weekend, which put Carrie just a couple of days away from Sunday, when she and Catholics the world over would come together to celebrate the Eucharist, wherein they would consume the body and blood of Jesus Christ fused within the sacramental bread and wine during a process known in Catholic theology as Transubstantiation. Jesus, Carrie believed, was the Lamb Of God who was sacrificed for her sins and the sins of the world. This not only served to commemorate the Last Supper, wherein Jesus urged his disciples, future priests and worshippers alike to "_do this in memory of me"_, but also placed those who received communion in the position of the Israelites in Egypt, where the eating of the sacrificial lamb and subsequent marking of houses with the blood saved them from the angel of death. The occasion was the high point of Carrie's week. Now, she wasn't even sure she wanted to go. She couldn't bear the mere hint of a thought that the priest that would offer this most holy sacrifice would be engaged in the most unholy of acts.

She then remembered a memory she had of her time with Sue and Tommy in Providence.

**It was a bright and sunny Tuesday morning in August. The trio had just gotten settled into their Providence flat. Carrie was getting dressed in her room, preparing to head out for another day of volunteering at the city food bank. As she was getting dressed and entering the kitchen, she could hear Tommy and Sue deep in conversation.**

"**Unbelievable…" Tommy muttered.**

"**Those poor kids…" Sue whispered, sadly. She then looked up to see Carrie in the room.**

"**Carrie!" She squawked in shock, shoving a newspaper under a placemat. "Good morning!"**

"**Good morning, Sue!" Carrie smiled. "What were you talking about?"**

"**Uh…just some kids that lost their cat! It was catnapped! Right, Tommy?" Sue answered, looking to her boyfriend for support.**

"**Yeah! Sure!" Tommy agreed, vociferously.**

"**That's terrible." Carrie said, sincerely. "I'll pray someone finds it. Well, bye!"**

**And with that, she set off to work. The day proceeded as it usually did, and Carrie felt she had a very good day overall – she had succeeded in collecting a large amount of canned goods for the bank. The trio of her, Sue and Tommy had a blast watching Netflix for the rest of the night before deciding to turn in. As Carrie was preparing to go to sleep, she could hear Sue and Tommy deep in conversation.**

"**We've got to tell her." Tommy was saying.**

"**What!? Are you crazy?" Sue hissed in response.**

"**Call me crazy if you want, Sue, but doesn't this sound like something Carrie needs to know about?" Tommy persisted.**

"**You heard Mr. Stark – we shouldn't do or say anything that will unduly stress her out. Not until she can fully control herself. What if we tell her, she freaks out and something happens to the baby? She wouldn't be able to live with herself." Sue retorted.**

"**Good point." Tommy conceded.**

"**So, we just tell her nothing." Sue declared. "She's hardly a news junkie – it's not like she'll trawl CNN or ABC News looking for it. Nothing changes – we just do happy things with her and try to give her some good memories of us before she goes off to New York."**

Carrie, at the time, was unsure just what Sue and Tommy were hiding from her. Now, after her research coupled with the timing of the memory, she knew exactly what they were concealing – the findings of the Pennsylvania grand jury. Normally, Carrie would be angry at such a thing, as she considered lying to be a sin. However, she could not help but be grateful to Sue in this instance, because she knew that, based on her visceral reactions to the scandal, something terrible would have happened to Tommy, Sue and their baby. And Sue was right – Carrie would not be able to live with herself, and cold fall prey to either the sin of suicide (or suicidal thoughts) or the sin of despair, believing that the harm she would have done was unforgivable, widely believed by some theologians to be the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" spoken of by Jesus in the Gospels, which would not be forgiven due to it denying the very nature of the Holy Spirit and the role it played in Carrie's faith to forgive the sins of all who ask and repent.

She supposed she should've known about the scandal by now. After all, she had been attending Mass both in Chamberlain and in Providence for as long as she could remember, and the news bulletins given out at the services probably featured information about the processes for reporting such abuses, as well as statements from the Bishops of Portland (Maine) and Providence on various abuse cases within their territories. However, she never took one home, for different reasons. In Chamberlain, she did not take one because of her fears that Margaret would find it and discover her own personal act of rebellion against her controlling ways. And in Providence, she didn't take one because she didn't want to run the risk of forming a connection that needed to be broken when she left for New York. Carrie couldn't handle the possibility of such heartbreak. And here she was, feeling heartbreak for a much worse reason than that.

Carrie stirred and saw the alarm clock on the side of the bed. _12:45pm? Shit! Is that the time?!_ She thought to herself as she hurriedly got out of bed and got dressed in a haphazard manner. She stumbled out of her bedroom, her hair frizzy and her eyes bloodshot, to notice Tony and Steve sitting on the couch. However, it was the man sitting there with them that really shocked and confused Carrie. He had a hard looking face that suggested he had seen hardship and conveyed authority as a leader. However, his kind eyes of green sent a message that he was there to listen and respect her. However, it was the clothing he wore that told Carrie who he was – or rather, _what_ he was. He wore a black cassock with a silver cross around his neck. Around his waist was a scarlet sash and on his head sat a small red cap. She was flabbergasted. Here was a cardinal of the Catholic Church – a very powerful and important man, sitting right there in her living room!

"Your Eminence!" Carrie exclaimed, doing a hurried curtsy and bowing her head.

The cardinal chuckled. "Looks like you were right, Captain." He remarked to Steve. He then turned to Carrie and smiled. "Hello, Carrie." He greeted, warmly. "My name is Cardinal Joseph McMahon, and I am the Catholic Archbishop of New York." Cardinal McMahon offered his hand to Carrie, who kissed the gold ring he wore on his right ring finger as a sign of respect and reverence before shaking it. He had a firm, authoritative grip – the kind that suggested that his handshake and his word were his bond. Carrie then took a seat in front of the cardinal, Steve and Tony.

"Carrie, I know you've had a lot of questions about God and stuff over the last few days, so the Capsicle roped in the cardinal here to answer them." Tony spoke.

"Yes, from what Captain Rogers told me, you have some concerns regarding the historical failures of church leaders to safeguard children from abusive priests." Cardinal McMahon noted.

"Sorry, Carrie." Steve muttered upon seeing the look of betrayal on Carrie's face. She sighed deeply.

"It's not your fault, Steve." She whispered, sadly. "I just don't understand how something so terrible could happen. Especially when it's done by somebody entrusted with performing such a sacred duty like Mass."

"I sometimes struggle to comprehend it as well, Carrie." The cardinal admitted. "Because it is a horrible sin and crime to contemplate. But I do not believe that God allowed it to happen. He gives all of humanity free will, and it is up to them to use it, for good or for ill. It is not in the nature of God to do evil things, otherwise the treason of Judas Iscariot, condemning Christ to the cross, is just as much the work of his hand as the conversion and teachings of the Apostle Paul. One is an act of selfish betrayal, the other an act of selfless submission and instruction. Or to use a non-biblical analogy, God causes mass shootings equally as much as he inspires the first responders that have to attend the scene. Either way, the same principle applies. One is evil and the other is good, and by the very duality between the two, they cannot come from the same place. As to how and why it happened, I have spoken to many abuse survivors here and in Rochester, New York during my tenure as bishop. A common theme I have noticed, particularly among those who had older abusers, was that the priests of many churches held an aura over their worshippers, resulting in a strong sense of easy trust on the part of parishioners and a sense of isolation amongst survivors when they were targeted. The reason I mentioned older abusers is that many felt the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, which involved the priest facing away from the congregation, contributed to many priests feeling untouchable and protected by God. In addition, the Church as an institution was placed on a much higher pedestal during those days, which gave the impression that to go against the evil men involved was to go against the church and, by extension, God himself. However, many social forces, both inside and outside of the faithful, have contributed to that pedestal being taken away, giving survivors more confidence to speak out."

"But what about the bishops moving priests? What about vetting processes?" Carrie wondered.

"That is a much more difficult question to wrestle with." Cardinal McMahon admitted. "It is my opinion that many bishops of the era were well meaning but naïve, ultimately believing that the priests involved would cease their sinful activity once reprimanded or absolved in a confessional – "_Go and sin no more"_ in the words of Jesus to the adulterous woman. Even if a confessor were to instruct such a priest to turn themselves in to the police for their penance, the true predators would ignore it, believing themselves absolved and continuing to celebrate Mass on the grounds that the sins of any priest do not invalidate the sacrament of the Eucharist conducted by them, and the confessor would be powerless to turn them in due to the seal of the confessional. Thus, history proves that was not the case. As to the matter of vetting, I liken the hierarchy of the church to that of a sports team. The Pope is the owner, the cardinals and bishops are like a GM of their respective diocese, and the priest is the coach of the team of believers. Often, a team will hire a good coach that takes their team to the playoffs and championships, in much the same way that a good priest nourishes the faith of his congregation and offers wise instruction to them. But sometimes, it will happen that a team hires a bad coach who misses the playoffs and loses the respect of the team and their fans. In this case, accountability often resides with the GM. Now, it goes without saying that the failure of church officials in this situation is a lot more serious than the travails of your average sports team, but I believe the same principle applies – that we should be held accountable. That _I_ should be held accountable. I am going to share with you the story of one of my greatest personal failings, Carrie. This is to prove to you that I am not hiding from this issue."

"What personal failing, Your Eminence?" Carrie asked, a pit of dread forming in her stomach.

"It was June 1997." The cardinal began. "At the time, I was the Bishop of Springfield, Illinois – not to be confused with the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts, which is an entirely separate entity. It was my responsibility – a responsibility that I continue to this day – to fly to Rome to provide a report on the state of the Diocese over the previous financial year to the Vatican. To this end, I was staying at a hotel in Chicago preparing to fly out from O'Hare International Airport. Suddenly, I received a call to my hotel room. It was from a member of the PTA of a Catholic school in Kincaid, Illinois. She claimed to have concerns about a priest in the area. I offered to put her in touch with my secretary, but she insisted she wanted to speak with me personally. I was ready to leave for the airport – you know how it is with international check-ins – and so I promised I would call her back."

"But you didn't, did you?" Carrie questioned.

"No, Carrie. I did not." Cardinal McMahon answered, looking every one of his 68 years. "Not out of any deliberate desire to avoid the conversation, but rather because my responsibilities as bishop prevented me from doing so. A confirmation here, a church dedication there and I just didn't have the time. In addition, I was going through a great deal of personal turmoil at this time, having lost both my father and a very dear friend of mine within months of each other. But I realise that those are no excuses.

I did not realise just how terrible of a mistake I made until I was in my next post, as Bishop Of Rochester. About six years after that phone call, I received a letter from my successor. The Diocese of Springfield had been conducting an inquiry in sexual abuse in institutions under its' jurisdiction. My name was bought up in relation to that phone call. The priest in question, whose case was put on the back burner due to the factors I mentioned earlier, stood accused of multiple acts of abuse over a twelve year period. And I had failed in my duty to stop him." He finished, sadly.

"So, what happened?" Carrie asked.

"I did the only thing I could do." The cardinal answered. "I tended my resignation to Rome. It was the right thing to do. But it was not accepted, and I continued to serve as Bishop Of Rochester and ultimately as Archbishop of New York. I offered an apology to the people of Springfield in general and the people of the diocese in particular, as well as those who were molested by the priest in question. I pledged to make the safety of children and youth my number one priority within the Diocese of Rochester, and have continued that work here in New York. I have also held regular meetings with survivors of sexual abuse and travel with them to Rome to put their case before His Holiness. But I know it will never be enough."

"You should have tried harder, Your Eminence." Carrie responded, a slight wobble in her voice. "You should have called her back. You should have _all _tried harder!"

"I know." Cardinal McMahon acknowledged, taking her words on board. "But I cannot change the past. I can only change the future, and I am doing all I can to do so."

"Did you know?" Carrie asked. "About the alleged abuse in Illinois?"

"No. I never heard any allegation of abuse. The caller just mentioned "concerning conduct", which could have meant anything." The cardinal answered. "I was beyond horrified when the accusations came out, as would any decent person."

"Then it wasn't your fault, Your Eminence." Carrie whispered, gently. "You didn't know, so you couldn't act."

Cardinal McMahon was dumbstruck. Here was this girl, barely out of high school, telling him that he was not responsible for any lives that may have been ruined under his watch. Ever since he had received Marvin's letter, the senior clergyman had tortured himself with nightmarish visions of similar things happening to innocent children under his watch. Their eyes would stare back at him, accusing him. Condemning him. And yet here was this young lady, as though she was sent by God and the Blessed Virgin, chasing his fears and nightmares away. Carrie was clearly wise beyond her years, he concluded.

"Funnily enough, that's exactly what His Holiness Pope Saint John Paul Ii said to me in his response to me. And that may be true, but I still intended to change my approach to this matter, and I did." He responded. "The Archdiocese and the NYPD have formed a partnership, wherein we refer every complaint made against a priest or church worker to the police, regardless of credibility. If the case is found to be credible, the NYPD notifies us so we can remove him from the ministry for the duration of the trial and, if found guilty, put together the appropriate paperwork to prepare for the priest's laicisation. In addition, the partnership sponsors a campaign known as "My Brother's Keeper", which encourages those that are being abused and those who suspect abuse is occurring to speak up – a call to bravery and Christian care of the innocent. This campaign has bought out the best of everyone in this archdiocese, especially in its' young people – one brave girl actually sheltered her best friend from her physically abusive father, who was a church treasurer in Ulster County. If, God forbid, something terrible happens to you in a church, you will have support in the Archdiocese and amongst your fellow believers, Carrie." The cardinal concluded, on a somewhat optimistic note.

Surprisingly, Carrie found herself becoming much more optimistic as well. Though she found it important to acknowledge the evils and faults of the past, she also realised that the response of the church in general, and Cardinal McMahon in particular, was getting better. It would never be a perfect response – by the sheer scope and nature of the scandal, how could it possibly be? But Carrie found herself starting to shake off the negative feelings she was having about God and the church, and actually found herself looking forward to integrating herself into a new church community in a new city.

"Thank you for those words, Your Eminence." Carrie smiled. "I actually feel much better now."

"Can I just give my two cents on this whole thing?" Tony piped up, as if to remind the world of his presence.

"You have every right, Mr. Stark. It is your daughters welfare that we are discussing." The cardinal replied.

"Okay, well first of all, if you're worried about my perception of you, don't be." Tony declared. "Trust me when I say that, in the late '90's and early aughts, the activities of men in weird dresses was the _last_ thing on my mind. Sure, I'm not going to pretend that you were some super leader while the whole Illinois thing was going on, but trust me when I say that there are worse reasons to not get stuff done than overworking and death."

"I appreciate your honesty." Cardinal McMahon admitted. "And that is one of the things I have changed. When I receive an abuse allegation so close to an important event like I discussed, I delegate responsibility for that event to an auxiliary bishop and focus all my energy on the accusation. Now, Carrie, there was something else that troubled me greatly. He said that your mother was very controlling and, in his opinion, abusive towards you."

"Sorry again, Carrie." Steve interjected. "But what she's said and done can't be kept a secret any longer."

Deep down, Carrie knew that Steve was right. Tony's influence had managed to keep her family's name out of the media in relation to the events in Maine. There was vague mention of a religious zealot being committed to the mental health system, but the White family name had not been mentioned in media coverage of the aftermath of the Chamberlain attack. She would never admit it, but she was still deeply traumatised from the abuse she had endured at the hands of Margaret and her bullies. In some ways, their actions stung her more than the priest abuse scandal, because she was betrayed by her own flesh and blood and people she had hoped to befriend, as opposed to the second-hand pain she felt reading about the priest scandal. And whilst her fears about the church had started to recede, she still felt the pain of what happened to her in her home town. The laughter. The sneers. The blood. The closet. Getting told to eat shit. Being called a cancer. All of it.

She then considered the case of the cardinal. Here he was, one of the most powerful men in Christendom, taking the time out of his busy day to reassure her of the safety of his territory. In addition, he had been extremely open and honest with her, letting her in on one of his most personal secrets. To her great surprise, she had been able to offer some consolation to His Eminence. Carrie saw no reason not to offer him the same opportunity.

"You do not have to say anything if you do not want to." Cardinal McMahon offered.

"Actually…I would like to talk, Your Eminence." Carrie answered, nervously.

"Okay, well I will just ask you some questions to get you comfortable." The cardinal declared. "How old are you, Carrie?"

"I'm 17, turning 18 in February." Was Carrie's reply.

"And what was your parish?" Cardinal McMahon inquired.

"Our Lady Star Of The Sea in Chamberlain, Maine." Carrie answered. "I also attended Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in Providence, Rhode Island while I stayed there for a holiday with my friends before I moved here this week."

"Ah! I am actually on quite good terms with Their Excellencies the Bishops of both Portland and Providence – we actually sit on the same committee of the Bishop's Conference that works to secure the protection of youth and young people in the church. Have you spoken to either of them before?" The cardinal asked.

"I actually received Confirmation and First Communion from the Bishop Of Portland." Carrie smiled, recalling the happy memory. "I've actually still got the photo. I'll go get it." She ran off to her bedroom and returned with a folder. She pulled out the photo in question. In it, a nine year old Carrie was smiling, wearing a lily-white dress with a flower in her hair, surrounded by both her proud priest and the Bishop of Portland. Standing off to the side was Margaret, keeping a straight face. This, the photo of her baptism and the photo of her graduation alongside Sue and Tommy were the only three photos she had of her time in Maine – after all, there weren't many happy memories for her there. She then passed the photo over to the cardinal.

"Well, then! You did indeed get confirmed and communicated by the Bishop Of Portland." Cardinal McMahon smiled as he took the photo. "And I hope none present take this in the wrong manner considering our earlier conversation, but you look absolutely angelic, Carrie! What was your Saint's name, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Thank you." Carrie smiled, weakly. "My saints name was Agnes, Your Eminence."

"The patron saint of chastity and virgins…" Cardinal McMahon mused. "Whilst I am aware that the canon of Christian martyrs contains some rather gruesome details, it would be my hope that your mother would…_sanitise _certain details of her death."

"St. Agnes was a daughter of Roman nobility in the fourth century who devoted herself to chastity." Carrie answered. "Due to her noble upbringing, she was a target of many suitors. Feeling slighted by her rejection, they turned her over to the authorities who were persecuting Christians. A judge ordered her to be stripped naked and dragged to a brothel, where she would be raped by a group of men. Legend has it her hair grew out and covered her body to protect her modesty, and that anybody who tried to rape her was struck blind. She was actually released after praying for the judge's dead son, who came back to life. The judge in question refused to preside over her trial, leaving someone else to condemn her to death. When burning her at the stake failed, they stabbed her through the throat. Oh, and did I mention she was twelve when all this was going on? So no, Your Eminence, she did _not _sanitise any details."

"So much for that…" The cardinal sighed.

"I think I just lost my appetite." Tony announced, looking slightly green.

"And that is the only comment you have to make?" Cardinal McMahon inquired. "No sarcastic references to a magical yeti?"

"Well, first of all, I'm not going to joke about something that my daughter spent a whole night crying her eyes out over – different situation, but there's parallels." Tony answered. "Even if some of the details are…outlandish. And second of all, just because something seems outlandish, doesn't mean it's not true. If you had told me that there was such a thing as two Norse deities walking around out there in space and other dimensions, I would have laughed in your face. But I've seen them. If Reindeer Games and Point Break are real, than who am I to say that the big capital G-Man isn't real, or that what Carrie just described didn't happen?"

To say the cardinal was shocked would be the understatement of the century. Had Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, man of science and irreverence personified, just admitted, in his own unique way, to being willing to be convinced of the truth of the message of Jesus Christ and the holy, Catholic and apostolic church he established? If there was rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner, than surely there would be a suitably fitting rave if this were to occur. Cardinal McMahon shook his head. The hypothetical salvation of Tony Stark would have to wait for another day, in God's perfect time.

"However, back to the matter at hand - this is not the current Bishop Of Portland, Bishop Wilson – this is his predecessor, Bishop Hammond, who now serves as Bishop of Lafayette, Indiana. Have you ever met Bishop Martinez, the Bishop Of Providence?" The cardinal inquired.

"No, Your Eminence. He was never at the cathedral when I went there." Carrie answered, truthfully.

"Your mother doesn't look very happy in this photo, Carrie." Cardinal McMahon frowned as he studied the photo intently. "One would think she would be delighted that her daughter had become a true and full member of the body of Christ."

"She felt that, in many cases, she was the only one qualified to teach me about faith." Was Carrie's sad response. "When I turned ten, shortly after this picture was taken, she pulled me out of school and forbade me from attending Mass. I still went though – I would sneak out. Anyway, she home-schooled me for about four or five years. Then the Maine Board Of Education got involved – there was a legal battle involved. Eventually, Mama was forced to send me to high school. And that was where all the trouble started."

"What sort of trouble?" The cardinal wondered.

"I imagine Steve told you my mother is now in a mental institution?" Carrie inquired, to which the senior cleric nodded.

"Well, this was because she would go around town saying terrible, extremist things to people. Things no one should ever say." Carrie responded. "Like that everyone in town was going to hell. She even told me one time that Father Stewart, my priest, was a wolf wearing the clothes of a lamb, and that he sought to devour the young girls in the church. I never realised how profoundly disturbing that statement was until I found out about…everything." She whispered.

"Anyway, my mother was not well liked around the town. The children at my school hated her, and they took out their anger on me. This bullying would escalate until an incident in my senior year known as the shower incident."

"You might want a drink or something." Tony suggested, as if to signpost the difficulty of the topic ahead.

"So, my gym class was having to have a shower after a game of water polo. Everyone had laughed at me after I accidentally hit a team-mate with the ball. So I'm about to get in the shower and I take my hand away from my body to find there's blood on my hand. I… gotten my first period." Carrie blushed, embarrassed to be describing such things in front of a man of God. "Or, what I know now to be my first period."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Cardinal McMahon asked.

"Mama didn't teach me about all that." Carrie answered. "She said it was the devil's work. I was so scared, Your Eminence! I thought I was dying!"

The cardinal felt his heart sink through the floor. This girl, a senior in high school, had no idea how her own body worked! This appeared to lie squarely at the feet of her mother, who was starting to look less Catholic and more Puritan with every passing minute. Despite the church's rather conservative stance on matters of the human body, they still allowed sex education to be taught in schools, provided certain elements complied with church teaching. But it seemed that this woman had not taught even one iota of the topic to Carrie. He was familiar enough with the taunts received surrounding disinterest in sexual matters – in fact, he had been dubbed "Joe No-Getting-Blowed" when he announced his intention to join the priesthood. It was pretty easy for Cardinal McMahon to imagine how Carrie's classmates/tormentors would react to someone in such distress over such a seemingly simple thing, especially given the general coarsening of society that had gone on over the decades.

Carrie, meanwhile, pressed on.

"One of the girls in my class figured out what was going on. She gave me a tampon at me and said I should "plug it up". Simple enough, right? Well, if I wasn't taught about my period, you can pretty much guarantee that I wasn't taught about tampons. It was like a chain reaction. One by one, they all got in on the act, chanting and throwing tampons. I'm pretty sure I saw a camera there as well. Not that I cared though – I just laid there crying." She finished, her voice cracking and lip quivering.

Cardinal McMahon felt his heart go out to Carrie. He had seen the best of the youth during his time as a bishop, where he had seen them come up with radical new ideas of how to shape the world in the image of Christ. But where there is light, darkness must surely follow, and the senior cleric knew that not all was roses and goodness in the world. The behaviour of this pack of bullies was a clear indication that the youth of the world still had a way to go in terms of being kinder to one another. Such cruelty towards such a vulnerable soul was unconscionable and a grave sin.

"You have my deepest prayers and sympathies for the ordeal you had to endure, Carrie." The cardinal offered comfortingly as he put the teenagers hand in his. He then turned to Tony. "If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now. Just water, though."

"Careful, Your Eminence." Steve joked. "The last person to say that in this tower got smashed into pieces by a hulking green rage monster."

"You sure you don't want something stronger, Cardinal? It doesn't get any easier from here." Tony answered.

"I assure you, I will be fine." Cardinal McMahon answered. He turned to Carrie. "You have been amazingly brave so far."

Carrie gave the barest hint of a smile beneath her nervous demeanour before pressing on.

"My gym teacher managed to stop the bullies, and my mother came to pick me up. Then we got home and…and…" She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Your Eminence. This is the most difficult part to talk about."

"Take your time, Carrie." The cardinal encouraged.

"She started banging her head on the wall." Carrie spoke, taking a deep breath in and out. "She was saying all these things. Things that sounded like they were from the Bible, but I know they weren't."

"What sort of things?" Cardinal McMahon wondered. He knew he had to be careful here – the Catholic Church held several dogmas that were not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, such as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and also held several books as canonical scripture that the more biblically based Protestant denominations did not acknowledge. He wished to know whether she was simply referencing church teaching, or if she was promoting something more sinister.

"Things like that I was lost…that the first sin was the sin of intercourse. And that God cursed Eve with a curse of blood." Carrie answered.

"I…see." The cardinal responded. He had his answer, then. "Well, I suppose I shall have to contact Loyola University and the Gregorian Pontifical University and get them to revoke my degrees. After all, no self-respecting theologian would dare miss this vital piece of sacred scripture." He finished, with a hint of sarcasm.

"I like this guy." Tony quipped. Meanwhile, Carrie pressed on.

"She said that I had lust-filled thoughts towards the other girls – that I had sinned and that's why it happened." Here, Carrie took a deep, shaking breath. "She said that God could smell my sin and that he would punish me. Then, she hit me with her Bible."

"She struck you with the Word of our Lord?!" Cardinal McMahon yelled, outraged that someone would desecrate a sacred text in such a way. Noticing how Carrie flinched and cowered away at his harsh tone, he calmed himself down.

"I apologise for the outburst, Carrie." He whispered. "Please continue."

"Then she said that we should pray together, to save our weak souls of women. I said no and that she had sinned by not telling me about my body. Then she said…" Carrie sighed, sadly and nervously. "She said: "Go to your closet."

The cardinal fervently hoped he had misheard. Had he just heard that Carrie's mother, needing to be there for her in a time of need, had ordered her to go to a _closet_?! Those were meant for clothes, not for human beings! Based on what he had heard so far about Carrie's mother, he had a sinking feeling about what exactly the closet was used for. He got a sense that Margaret White was one of the "class of rattlesnake" that Father Gerald Fitzgerald had railed against in the 1950's – although a different breed, her venom appeared to be no less poisonous than that of clerical abusers like the infamous Father Harlan. They both sank their fangs into vulnerable, innocent victims and poisoned them. The fact that Carrie was here to tell her tale was testament to her enormous resilience.

"Did she lock you in this closet, Carrie?" Cardinal McMahon asked, gently. To which Carrie could only nod as tears began to pool in her eyes. Tony and Pepper ran over to comfort her, sending an unspoken message that the senior cleric understood loud and clear – no more questions for the time being. He got the distinct impression that, were he not to comply, he would become the first Archbishop Of New York to be defenestrated. This proved advantageous to him as he began to figure out the next step of comforting Carrie and welcoming her to New York. He had heard enough about the beliefs of Margaret White to draw some very certain and concrete conclusions about her mindset.

"Those were some very disturbing beliefs I heard about." The cardinal began, slowly. "There is a word for beliefs like your mother's. And that word is heresy."

"Oooohhhh! Heretic!" Tony playfully squealed, delighted with the prospect of that mad woman getting taken a peg. "Shall I get the _comfy chair_?"

"Unfortunately, I believe I have left it at my residence." Cardinal McMahon answered, understanding the reference.

"Okay, I _really _like this guy." Was Tony's response. Carrie, however, was nonplussed by the cardinal's declaration. He had labelled her mother a heretic, meaning that her beliefs stood contrary to those of the Catholic Church. Heretics were often expelled from the church or killed for their beliefs. This put Carrie in two minds – while she was eternally grateful to His Eminence for his compassion towards her, she was deeply concerned about the implications this had for her mother – after all, she still forgave her and prayed for her to find healing for her troubled soul.

"Heretic? What do you mean?" Carrie asked.

"Well, where do I begin?" The cardinal inquired. "Should I begin with the fact that she clearly espoused the doctrine of predestination, a concept that runs contrary to the very idea of free will as the Catholic Church has understood it? Or the fact that she wilfully invented Bible verses to suit her own ends? I will focus on how she has perverted the doctrine of original sin. The teaching states that Adam _and _Eve's sin of disobeying the Almighty and eating from the tree of knowledge – not just Eve and not the sin of intercourse – effectively infected all future human beings with sin – male and female alike, no one greater or lesser. However, this sin is removed from a person when they are baptised and become a follower of Christ. From there, the only barriers to God's Grace are those we erect through our own sins, which can be removed with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or confession if one prefers to use a layman's term. By declaring that the manifestation of your womanhood resulted in a second wave of original sin being infused within you, she denied the power of baptism to remove original sin once and for all. But don't take my word for it – listen to the authority of the Council Of Trent."

"Whoa! Whoa! Back up a moment!" Tony exclaimed. "Trent from accounting is running for council?!"

"Would it terribly shock you to learn you are wrong?" Cardinal McMahon remarked, wryly.

"I guess not." Tony deadpanned.

"No, Mr. Stark." The cardinal continued. "The Council Of Trent was a ecumenical council that lasted for an 18 year period in the 16th century. The ultimate result of this council was a clear differentiation of the and aspects of its doctrine from the various Protestant denominations that were emerging at the time such as Lutheranism, Calvinism and the Church Of England that would go on to act as head of the Anglican Communion, the parent church of the Episcopal Church here in America. The Council Of Trent enacted no less than 109 canons that declared those who held or did not hold certain beliefs to be heretics. These canons excommunicated the persons referred to from the Catholic Church, each ending with the rather foreboding statement: "_let him be anathema."_ The two most relevant canons to this situation are as follows.

"_If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or asserts that the nature of sin is not taken away, let him be anathema._"

I have discussed this earlier and what it means in regards to the actions of Carrie's mother. The other canon I would like to quote concerns justification, or in plain English, whether someone receives salvation and gets to go to heaven.

"_If anyone says that a man born again and justified is bound to believe that he is one of the predestined, let him be anathema."_

Predestination, which I referenced earlier, is a concept that originated in Calvinism. The doctrine essentially states that God has unchangeably ordained the destinies of all humanity – some will receive salvation, and all others damnation. By declaring that certain persons were destined for hell, and by association marking herself as destined for heaven, she has denied the fundamental Catholic doctrine of free will in which humanity, made in the image of their loving Creator, direct themselves towards their true good and the grace of salvation. This is not to say that she is not a _Christian_, but that her ideas are considered contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church that she was baptised into.

Lastly, I will turn to the matter of canon law – the law of the church. The 1983 Code Of Canon Law prescribes a _latae sentitiae _excommunication for heretics – that is to say, one that takes place at the moment of the act. However, there is a strict provision that excludes those with mental illness from this penalty. If Carrie's mother offers true repentance for her actions, she can be rejoined with the church – however, such acts are considered a mortal and serious sin. And this is to say nothing of the fact that the natural functions of the human body are not a sin, nor of the disgraceful way she has treated Carrie. In short, were it not for her clearly disturbed state of mind, it is my opinion that Carrie's mother would have excommunicated herself from the church long ago."

Thus Cardinal McMahon concluded, bringing his empty glass firmly down onto a small table, as if to drop the mic on Margaret White. Silence reigned in the apartment for a few moments. Then, a wicked smile began to creep across Tony's face.

"I…DRINK…YOUR…MILKSHAKE!" Tony thundered as he drank from the cardinal's empty glass. "I DRINK IT UP!"

Carrie, however, was feeling a sense of both relief and disbelief. Disbelief that her mother's mental prison had been smashed and breached so easily. It was quite clear that Cardinal McMahon was a very smart and educated man, and he had just used his years of clerical and spiritual experience to expose Margaret's words for what they were – the ravings of a mad woman. There was also relief – relief that a man of God had stood up for her, as well as that there was still hope for her mother if she got better. But she had one last set of questions for the cardinal.

"So…it's not a sin to talk to boys? Or wear a dress? Or go to the beach?" Carrie asked, warily.

"Of course not!" The cardinal exclaimed.

Carrie couldn't hide her emotions anymore. She placed her head in her hands and began to weep for the life she could have lived – a life of normalcy, a life of freedom and a life of wonder that she never had. She could have spent more time getting to know Tommy, or undergone the traditional ritual of picking out a wardrobe or even, in some sort of alternative, parallel universe, going to the beach with her popular friends the Ultras. But all this was stolen from her by a mother who wanted her to be a servant first and a daughter second. Cardinal McMahon could only look on sadly as Carrie was comforted by Tony, Steve and Pepper. _By the Blessed Mother, how much has this poor girl had to endure?_ He thought to himself.

"And that's not even the worst part, Your Eminence." Steve stated, bluntly. "She actually tried to kill Carrie by stabbing her."

"And why exactly in God's name would she do that?!" The cardinal exclaimed in exasperation, losing his patience with the blasted woman. Suddenly, he saw something that made him do a double-take – the table, and all the contents on it, were floating in the air! And what was even more astonishing was that Carrie seemed to be responsible for it – she was focusing on it deeply and intently. Eventually, the floating objects were lowered tenderly to the ground. Both Carrie and the cardinal had wildly differing thoughts.

Carrie was filled with fear and trepidation at the cardinal's silence. Was he going to declare her a witch? Was his silence part of his plan to make his pronouncement more dramatic? Would she be dragged into Broadway and get burned at the stake? The rational part of her brain said that this was ridiculous – the church didn't burn anyone any more, and if they did try something with her, she knew that Tony and the Avengers would fight for her. But a large part of her brain was still irrational, shaped by Margaret's controlling ways, and she had no idea what was about to happen.

Cardinal McMahon was amazed at the sheer power on display from such a young girl. Clearly, this particular talent also served as a major reason why the Avengers were interested in her welfare. He also marvelled at Carrie's strong commitment to the faith. His thoughts began to wander. Perhaps having an Avenger in the flock would make for good PR given recent events and-_Damnit, Joseph! Snap out of it, you fool! You're better than this!_ The cardinal reprimanded himself for allowing his thoughts to traverse those lines – after all, his visit here was to provide comfort and reassurance. Carrie's personal good was his priority. Not the church, not himself, nothing. His thoughts strayed to his episcopal motto.

_Quis Est Meus Proximus._ _Who is my neighbour?_

_Carrie. Carrie is my neighbour._

"Tell me, Carrie." The cardinal asked. "Do you attend Mass and receive communion as often as you are able to, within reason?"

"Yes, Your Eminence." Carrie replied.

"And do you go to confession, when the situation calls for it?" Cardinal McMahon inquired.

"Yes, Your Eminence." Was the reply, as Carrie remembered how she had received absolution for "pushing" that snarky boy off his bike as well as her angry thoughts towards God in the closet.

"And do you do your utmost to obey the teachings of God Our Father and Our Lord Jesus Christ in everything you do?" Was the final question.

"Yes, Your Eminence." Came the answer.

The cardinal smiled. "Then, as far as God, the church and myself are concerned, you are a beloved child of God, full of grace and light and a true member of Christ's universal body. It is my greatest joy to welcome you to your new family of believers in the Archdiocese of New York, Carrie."

"Thank you, Your Eminence!" Carrie exclaimed joyfully. She was finally free to follow, honour and worship God how _she _wanted, not how her mother ordered. Cardinal McMahon then placed his hand on her head and began to pray.

"Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless your servant Carrie on her new journey here in New York. Be her comforter, her ruler and her guide. Set her free from sin and fear, and allow her to walk with joy in the light of Your presence. I ask this in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever."

"Amen!" Carrie beamed.

"May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your heart and mind in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." The cardinal intoned, as he marked the Sign Of The Cross over Carrie's forehead.

"Amen." Carrie smiled in contentment.

"And that's that." Cardinal McMahon declared magnanimously . "Carrie, you have just received my personal blessing for your new life here. I welcome you to your new home."

"Is anyone else smelling onions in here, or is it just me?" Tony asked, wearing his dark sunglasses. This is one quirk that Carrie recognised about her new father – he would cover his eyes with the glasses whenever he felt any true emotion. She had seen him put them on when she first told him all about what Margaret had done to her. Judging by his remark about onions, it was pretty safe to say that he was moved by what he had just witnessed.

"In all seriousness, thank you for today." The originator of Iron Man continued. "I know Carrie's faith means a lot to her, and what you just did clearly meant a lot to her as well. I think she needs a balanced education about her faith – preferably from someone who's not, I dunno, _completely and totally insane_?"

"I could not have said it better myself, Mr. Stark." The cardinal answered. "In fact, I am extending an invitation to Carrie to attend my Sunday Mass at St, Patrick's Cathedral as my personal guest."

"I dunno about that, Cardinal." Tony answered. "It's no secret that the Avengers have a lot of enemies. If any one of them should learn that my daughter goes to church in the most famous church in the country…well, you don't need me to draw you a picture of what would happen. I'd just feel better if Carrie worshipped somewhere less visible."

"That is your right to feel that way. And I will do all I can to find a suitable parish for your daughter." Cardinal McMahon accepted. "But I believe that a vulnerable soul like Carrie needs spiritual nourishment. As such, I insist on extending the welcome of the cathedral to her until such a time as that is accomplished."

And so it was that Carrie turned up, in her Sunday best, to the legendary church on 5th Avenue. The distinctive twin spires Of St. Patrick's Cathedral stood at attention in the cold Sunday air, as if to act as a pair of giant rockets, set to carry the prayers of the faithful to God. On the other side of the street, in the plaza of the Rockefeller Centre was the world-famous statue of Atlas, carrying the world on his shoulders. Carrie thought it a fitting location, as both Atlas and Jesus Christ both took the world upon their shoulders, albeit in very different manners. As she entered the cathedral, the first thing that struck her was the size of the building. Row upon row of pews filled the building. Behind her, a beautiful rose window filtered light into the building, making it seem like she was standing in the light of God. There were a large number of stained glass windows, reaching up to the ceiling. Side by side, the flags of the United States and the Vatican hung proudly from a pair of pillars. To the left of the marble altar sat Cardinal McMahon's cathedra, the chair reserved for the bishop and the seat of his authority over the Catholics of New York City. On the top of the large wooden chair was his coat of arms. On the top was a red hat called a galero, worn by the cardinals of old. From the top of the galero, fifteen tassels hung from a cord on each side, so it looked like two large triangles stood on either side. In the middle was the escutcheon, a square that was hung from a processional cross. The first half of the square on the left side contained a red St. Andrew's cross on a grey background with four small red crosses in each quadrant – the symbol of the Archdiocese of New York. This symbol had changed over the years as the diocese he was head of changed. On the right side was the Cardinal's own personal heraldry – a red daisy in full bloom on a green background. This was a symbol of His Eminence's loyal love of the Lord and the Gospel message, as well as symbolising his home town of BLOOMINGton, Illinois. (A wizened old clerk probably groaned aloud when this design was submitted.) Above the daisy, a crescent moon hung upside down, as if it was smiling. This was a symbol of the Virgin Mary – specifically, the Immaculate Conception Of Jesus within her. This was to represent the Cathedral of St. Mary Of The Immaculate Conception in Peoria, Illinois, the cardinal's home diocese. On a ribbon running along the bottom of the coat of arms was his personal motto: _Quis Est Meus Proximus_. To the right of the altar was a smaller chair, used by the parish pastor of the cathedral.

Carrie got up and sang out with joy for the first day of the rest of her life as the procession entered the church. Two altar servers were at the front, carrying a cross and the book the readings would be read from. In the middle were the people who would do the first two readings. Bringing up the rear were both Cardinal McMahon and the parish pastor of St. Patrick's Cathedral, a priest who looked to be in his mid-50's with a beard. Both he and the cardinal wore green vestments, with the latter wearing a white papal-style hat called a mitre and carrying his crosier in his right hand.

Then the readings came, and as if by divine providence, they all seemed to apply to Carrie somehow. The first reading, from the book of Jeremiah, called on all people to stand firm in their faith and convictions without compromise, which Carrie planned to do so both inside and outside of her superhero journey. The second reading, from 1 Corinthians, contained perhaps the most beautiful verses in the Bible, in Carrie's opinion. "_Love is patient, love is kind…love never ends._" She was moved as she thought of how patient and kind Tony and the rest of the Avengers had been towards her. She loved how they had come to respect her faith and the role it played in her life, despite their own positions on the matter. The Gospel, proclaimed by Cardinal McMahon, concerned Jesus preaching in his home town of Nazareth. It was here that he proclaimed to a crowded synagogue that he was not sent to the Jewish people of the time, but to Gentiles – the outcasts. Citing two examples of Old Testament scripture, this message outraged his audience, who attempted to throw him off a cliff. It was almost as if the mercy of God had been visited upon her when the Avengers had come calling. She imagined the look on Chris' face if she found out she now had the support and backing of a man who could buy and sell John Hargensen three times over.

When the time came to take communion, Carrie got up and joined the line. As she approached the cardinal, she sensed the faintest hint of a smile cross his face.

"The Body Of Christ." He intoned as he presented the host to her.

"Amen." Carrie murmured reverently as she accepted the host and placed it in her mouth. In that moment, all the doubt and fear she had felt about joining with the church disappeared, to be replaced by a sense of peace and contentment. And so it came to pass, in that moment in St. Patrick's Cathedral, that Carrie had learned to walk with her Lord and Saviour in joy instead of fear.

*** TCOS ***

It was a fortnight later that Cardinal McMahon returned to the Avengers Tower. This time he had a priest in tow, dressed in a plain black cassock with his priestly collar visible. He had thinning brown hair and looked to be in his 40's. But what most struck Carrie were his piercing blue eyes that looked as if he could see into people's souls.

"Good news, Carrie! I do believe that I have found the appropriate parish for you." The cardinal declared. "May I introduce Father Sean Wilkes, parish priest at St. Mary Of The Angels in TriBeCa."

"How's it goin', lass?" The priest drawled in his Irish accent, shaking her hands. Father Wilkes had rough, calloused hands that looked as though they had seen a lot of heavy lifting.

"So, His Eminence says you're a bit of a V.I.P." He continued. "Wouldn't wanna jacks it up, now, would we. Then I'd look a right eejit and need a pint of the black stuff to calm me down. Then I'll look an even bigger eejit, sitting there at the bar without drinking it. Because I, you know, don't drink."

"You lost me at V.I.P." Tony commented. "But I think the cardinal's right, Carrie. Happy checked this place out and it seems legit."

Unbeknownst to Carrie, Tony and Happy had been holding meetings with Cardinal McMahon and the Archdiocese's security team, in order to find the perfect church for her to be a part of from a security standpoint.

"The elementary school attached to the church is one of the best performing in the country, and the "Brother's Keeper" campaign educates all parish staff on mandatory reporting laws, in order to keep me in line." Father Wilkes offered. "Not that you need to worry about any of that – the Archdiocese requires that I not be alone with any person under 18."

"Well, this is where I take my leave." The cardinal declared. "But the doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral are always open to you, Carrie. And so is my office, provided you make an appointment. Here's my card." The cardinal then presented Carrie with his business card, which bore his coat of arms.

"Thank you, Your Eminence. And I will return. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to make me feel welcome." Carrie replied, gratefully.

"Think nothing of it. It's right there in my motto." Cardinal McMahon replied. "Plus I saw a small amount of myself in you, Carrie. But that is a story for another day."

"Yeah, I'm gonna need you to explain the motto. Not a big Latin guy." Tony interjected.

"_Quis Est Meus Proximus_ means "Who is my neighbour?" – a reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan." The cardinal spoke. "_There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him: "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He said in reply: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself." He replied to him: "You have answered correctly, do this and you shall live." But because he wanted to justify himself, he said to Jesus: "And who is my neighbour?" Jesus replied: "A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off, leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveller who came upon was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds, and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day he took two silver coins out and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction: 'Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on the way back.' Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbour to the robbers' victim?" He answered: "The one who treated him with mercy." Jesus said: "Go and do likewise."_

Tony pondered the cardinal's words. In many ways, he was Carrie's own personal Good Samaritan. She had been ravaged and abused by both her mother and her bullies, just as the traveller in the parable had been. Nobody, either from the secular or religious authorities in Chamberlain, had noticed what was going on or ignored her. Instead, it was left to him – someone who stood contrary to the very things Carrie valued, to pick up the pieces and care for her. It was clear that very same concern drove the powerful clergyman to comfort and accommodate her. Maybe this Jesus guy was alright after all…

"I will, Your Eminence." Tony promises, sincerely.

"Sorry? I didn't quite catch that. I will _who?"_ Cardinal McMahon quipped, cupping his hand to his ear.

"Your Eminence." Tony repeated, louder this time.

"Ah! You used my formal title!" The cardinal exclaimed, jovially. "We'll make a good Catholic of you yet, Mr. Stark! And I fully expect to see you at the Al Smith Dinner this year! Goodbye, Carrie! May God bless and keep you!"

And with those words, the Archbishop of New York took his leave.

"Well, go on! Best give you two the grand tour then." Father Wilkes spoke up. "It's only about a 15 minute drive from here."

So Carrie and Tony got in the car and followed the priest to St. Mary Of The Angels Catholic Church. When they got there, they took in the building. It was an Italian Renaissance style building located in the southern part of Manhattan. Carrie could see the towering spire of One World Trade Centre and the Hudson River, marking the border between New York and New Jersey. On the lawn to the left of the church door was a statue of the Virgin Mary, dressed in white and wearing a crown of stars on her head, as outlined in the Book of Revelation. On the base of the statue was the inscription: _REGINA ANGELORUM – QUEEN OF THE ANGELS_, a reference to one of my many titles of reverence given to the mother of Jesus by Catholics. Next to the statue were busts of the three archangels – Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Together, these four statues stood silent guard over the church, promising peace and security to the worshippers.

Father Wilkes then opened the doors and ushered Carrie and Tony into the main body of the church. The floor was made of white marble. At the rear right of the church was a baptismal font with small cherubs on the sides. Alongside the walls of the church were stained glass windows depicting important events involving angels from the Bible, such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Temptation Of Jesus in the desert, where angels floated below the Temple on which Christ and the Devil were standing referencing one particular challenge, the Ascension Of Jesus into heaven, the final battle between heaven and hell led by the archangel Michael, the Assumption Of The Virgin Mary and the crowning Of the same as Queen Of Heaven (whilst the last two were not explicitly referenced in the Bible, they were considered a part of the Church's sacred tradition.) At the front of the church was a large rose window depicting Jesus, Mary and Michael together in the majesty of heaven, surrounded by a choir of angels.

The church filled Carrie with feelings of wonder and joy. It was large enough to be grand, yet small enough to be modest. It was beautiful without being overly ornate and ostentatious. And, perhaps most importantly given recent events and discoveries, it made her feel safe.

"I think it's a pass mark, padre." Tony observed as he watched the look of contentment on his daughters face.

"Wonderful! You and Carrie wait here while I go and get the parishioner registration form." The priest announced as he left. A few moments later, he returned with a firm for Carrie to fill out, with details such as her name, phone number and whether she would like to do a ministry in the church, such as a reading or helping to distribute communion. Once the form had been filled out, Father Wilkes smiled.

"Carrie, you are now an official member of St. Mary Of The Angels parish. Welcome." He announced, graciously.

The smile on Carrie's face could have lit up the coming night sky.

Later that night, Tony and Pepper approached Carrie with a bag.

"We've actually got some things for you." Tony stated.

"Call it a late birthday present, Carrie." Pepper followed up.

Carrie then reached into the paper bag and was shocked and pleasantly surprised as she pulled out a new golden crucifix, a Bible with a red leather bound cover and a rosary with beads made of Stirling silver. A small cross hung at the end of the set of beads.

"This was actually the cardinal's idea." Tony explained. "He said that since you're starting a new life here in New York, you should have a new spiritual life as well. It was clear your batshit crazy mother wasn't letting you live your faith how you wanted to. The poor dear running the store almost had a heart attack when she saw me and-"

His words were cut off by Carrie throwing her arms around him.

"I love them!" Carrie exclaimed as she embraced her new parents. "Thank you, Dad! Thank you, Mum!"

Tony and Pepper felt tears in their eyes as they heard themselves referred to by such titles. Was this how it felt to be parents? Maybe they should try for one of their own one day, they thought.

That Sunday, Carrie attended her first Mass at her new church. She couldn't help but smile when she saw a posting in the church news bulletin that read: _Please welcome our newest parishioner, Carrie Stark, and keep her in your prayers._ At the end of the service, Father Wilkes took her around to introduce her to some of the congregation.

"Everyone, this is our newest member, Carrie." Introduced the priest.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Antonio De Rossi." A man that looked to be in his early 50's with sensible glasses introduced himself, in a voice that carried a distinctive Italian accent.

"Thank you, sir." Carrie responded.

"Stark? You mean, as in…" Inquired another church-goer, an African-American woman.

"Don't be ridiculous! The man doesn't have a spiritual bone in his body!" Antonio retorted.

"Actually, I do live with him – he adopted me." Carrie responded, feeling slightly offended. "And I wouldn't write him off – he might surprise you all some day." She finished, remembering his openness to the martyrdom of St. Agnes, as well as his genuine, sincere response to the parable of the Good Samaritan.

To his credit, Antonio seemed to realise his _faux pas_. "I am sorry, Carrie. Please forgive my skepticism." He muttered.

"Well, as stimulating as this conversation has been, I get the distinct impression that Carrie might like to talk to some people nearer her age." Father Wilkes interjected. "If you will excuse us." He then guided Carrie over to where two teenage girls were standing. One was wearing a smart black jacket and leggings under a blouse. She had a Mediterranean looking complexion. The other was an African-American wearing a blue dress that reached past her knees.

"Brianna, Olivia, this is Carrie Stark." The priest introduced. "Carrie, this is Brianna Lawrence-" indicating the African-American, "and Olivia De Rossi." Pointing out the girl in the black jacket. "They're deeply involved in our youth and young adult ministry here at the church."

Just then, Carrie was engulfed in a hug by Olivia, the girl in the jacket.

"Oh, thank God! I finally get to meet someone new that's my age!" Olivia squealed, happily. "It's so nice to meet you, Carrie!"

"Nice to meet you too!" Carrie smiled. "Wait, did Father say De Rossi? You mean…"

"Yeah. That's my dad over there." Olivia responded, pointing out Antonio. "And that's Bri's Mum over there." She continued, pointing out the African-American woman that Carrie had met earlier. Whilst Olivia's voice contained a clear hint of the same Italian flavour as Antonio's, the dominant accent was closer to a traditional New York style.

"So, what exactly does the youth and young adult ministry do?" Carrie asked.

"Well, we help Father put on the monthly youth Mass here." Olivia answered.

"Yeah, and we also hold regular meetings where we discuss Catholic social teaching and how to apply it to the youth of today." Brianna continued. "By the way, nice to meet you as well, Carrie." The pair then shook hands.

"So, what's your story?" Olivia asked, curiously.

"I've actually moved here from Maine to go to college." Carrie answered. "I actually spent the last few months holiday in gin Rhode Island. I've just been dying to get here and get involved with this church!"

At this statement, Olivia suddenly looked momentarily distracted.

"You okay, Olivia?" Carrie asked, concerned.

"Hm? Oh, nothing." The Italian-American responded, brushing off Carrie's concern. "Just remembered a project I've gotta do."

"Since when do you worry about homework during soccer season, Livy?" Brianna teased. She then turned back to Carrie. "Anyway, is it true that you live with Tony Stark?"

"Yes, I-" Carrie began to reply, But was cut off by a loud horn blasting. She turned to see Happy in the limo, parked across the street. "Oops, that's my ride! Can't keep him waiting." She smiled.

"Okay! Bye, Carrie!" Olivia called.

"Hope to see you around!" Brianna added.

Carrie walked out the doors of St. Mary Of The Angels and into the mid-February sun. It was a cool day as far as sunny days go, but inside she was filled with joy and light. Her mother's mental tortures were but a distant memory. She had been shown the true, welcoming face of faith courtesy of Cardinal McMahon, as well as Brianna and Olivia whom she looked forward to getting to know. She had grown closer to Tony and Pepper, going so far as to call them her parents for the first time.

And to think this all came about because of her discovery of the ultimate evil. She had stared down the poisonous rattlesnake that represented all those priests who had abused their authority in such a horrible way. But that rattlesnake had laid an egg – a beautiful, golden egg containing faith, hope and love.

For the first time in her life, Carrie was truly happy.

*** TCOS ***

**Disclaimer: I got the Latin translation for the Cardinal's motto from Google Transkate. I make no claims as to its grammatical accuracy.**


End file.
